It’s the end of an era. Today (April 30), Local Natives founding member Kelcey Ayer took to social media to announce his departure from the band.
Ayer has been a part of Local Natives for nearly two decades, keyboards, percussion, and guitar, in addition to singing. In an Instagram post, he revealed that the split from the band was amicable and he will be using his time away from the band to explore new creative avenues.
“I have my own music and my own interests that I’d like to see flourish, and while my bandmates have always been supportive, the reality is that time is finite,” said Ayer. “It came to a point that I realized my whole adult life I’ve been a part of one thing and I just yearn to explore. I don’t know what the future holds, but I just want to find out what that can be on a wide open road.”
But Ayer isn’t leaving just yet. He will continue to perform with the band on the ongoing tour for their album Time Waits For No One and its companion project But I’ll Wait for You.
You can see Ayer’s full post below.
Feels pretty surreal to be saying this to you all, but after 20 years of playing with these guys, I’ve decided to leave Local Natives. This isn’t a decision I’ve come to lightly. I’ve spent more time with this band than I’ve been alive without it. People ask me all the time what it’s like, and I have to pause and gather myself for the extensive list: we’re creative collaborators, business partners, live performers, sometimes arch rivals, most-of-the-time giggly teenagers, and despite not being blood-related, it felt as close to family as I think you can get. They are above all else my brothers. I couldn’t ask for a better group of guys. The highest highs and lowest lows, all dealt with compassion, camaraderie, awe-inspiring talent, humility, character, joy, and steadfast loyalty. I’d kiss them if I was more sexually attracted to them and my wife would allow it. I don’t think the Eagles can say that. You have a lot to learn, Eagles.
The reason I’m leaving is because Ryan tore a sticker off my kickdrum back in high school that I really really liked and I’ve been waiting for the right moment — k I’m sorry, I’ll be serious. Being in a band this committed and intense comes with a lot. It’s your entire life, and just doesn’t leave room a ton of room to build anything else. While I have cherished so so much that we’ve built, I’ve always wanted space and time to build other things. I have my own music and my own interests that I’d like to see flourish, and while my bandmates have always been supportive, the reality is that time is finite. It came to a point that I realized my whole adult life I’ve been a part of one thing and I just yearn to explore. I don’t know what the future holds, but I just want to find out what that can be on a wide open road.
I just want to say I feel so lucky to have been on this journey with my bandmates and with you. I want to thank you all for your support of this band; taking us into your hearts, rejoicing and grieving with us, and making us a part of your lives. I really wish the best for LN moving forward and am excited to see what they make in the future. Life is long, and who knows, maybe I’ll be LN’s John Frusciante, but for now I’ll say this is not the end of Local Natives or the end of me. I’m excited to celebrate this last year of shows with you all (I’ll be here for the last phase of touring/promoting TWWFNO & BIWFY, so the end isn’t quite here yet). And I hope you’ll understand that life is complicated. I can love them and love myself. And at almost 38 in one week, I want to see what it’s like to choose myself.
I love you all. I love you Ry, Tay, Matt, Nik, Sarah, Mara, Nada and Lindsey (and Mel duhhhhhhhh). And I’m excited for all our futures. All of us! Except the Eagles.
The man behind some of the streaming era’s biggest prestige hits – Peaky Blinders, See, Taboo, All The Light We Cannot See – never really knows how the stories he creates will end. He likes to build a maze out of hour-long episodes, then see if he can find its exit.
With his latest series, FX’s spy thriller The Veil, Knight keeps himself guessing as the story of two undercover operatives, on the road trip from hell, try to outsmart each other in a race to stop a deadly attack on innocent civilians. It’s Thelma & Louise if Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis were enemies and the cliff was a potential disaster on U.S. soil. Knight conceived the idea after a conversation with producer Denise Di Novi who told him some fascinating stories she’d heard over dinner in Paris. Their narrator had connections to the world of French Intelligence and Di Novi thought a TV show might be lurking somewhere in those brief bits of shared information.
She was right, and Knight found it with help from star/producer Elisabeth Moss, who plays Imogen Salter, an agent so good at her job that even the government agencies she works for don’t fully trust her. A shapeshifter with a muddied backstory and murky intentions, Imogen’s job is to earn the trust of a suspected terrorist played by Yumna Marwan as the two travel from Istanbul to London. All the while, competing intelligence groups led by Josh Charles and Dali Bessalah, scramble to regain control before the worst happens.
UPROXX chatted with Knight about his prolific career — including plans for more Peaky Blinders fare – his unique approach to storytelling, and why he wanted to avoid any James Bond comparisons with this spy adventure.
What was the genesis of this story? What was talked about at that dinner that made you want to write a spy thriller?
They were talking about the new challenges to intelligent services around the world, [how that] led to some friction between different organizations. So, the CIA and the DGSI, and MI6, all have their own different ways of doing things, but they’re all being forced to work together. And the fact that women in that world were treated in a particular way in different places. I just thought that was really interesting. So I went to Paris a couple of times and met some people in the French Intelligence Services, one retired, one still working, neither of whom wanted to be acknowledged. And we just talked about how things are and what the world is like. Obviously, the truth is always much weirder than anything made up.
So, I pieced together some things from what they told me. I’ve previously done research for another project with CIA operatives and a different project with MI5. And the difference between them… You go to Washington DC, you go to the Sea Catch restaurant, you have lunch and there’s a table full of CIA operatives telling you everything. Nothing that they shouldn’t, they’re telling you about experiences they’ve had in the field. It’s brilliant, and then you try that with the British and they don’t even acknowledge that MI5 exists. [They’ll say], ‘I work for a tractor company.’ The French are somewhere in between. So I found that really interesting and wanted to create this story out of the collage of bits that I was getting from people who’d done this in the real world.
Did anything shock you?
Everything. This is the thing that I think is important, I think one can get this idea that intelligence services or the state or whatever is this super-efficient, 10 steps ahead of everyone else, organization. Anything that happens, of course they planned that. [But] they’re just people doing what they can in these circumstances. I think it’s quite encouraging that they’re fallible. It’s not 1984, it’s not like everything’s been bolted down and they know exactly what’s going to happen.
You’ve got nine projects in the works at the moment. How do you prioritize the shows/movies you’re working on?
Well a few of those things, including The Veil, are things I wrote during the pandemic. The phone didn’t ring. There was no deadline. So, some of the things I came up with while it was going on. But I mean, people come to me with commissions and I also come up with stuff that I want to do. For me, the discipline is in stopping myself from doing it. Not making myself do it, because I have to get up and live a life. Everybody’s different in the way that they approach what they do, but I write what comes to me in that moment, when I’m doing it. It’s like dreaming – you just stop resisting whatever it is that’s coming.
So this is a story, there are two people in the car on the road. If I’m just getting to know who the characters are, I just let them talk to each other about whatever. And then it’s almost like I read it back and see where that’s going and often I find out things about the character from things that they’ve said. I know it sounds ridiculous, and I used to pretend that I planned everything out and had a treatment and pieces of paper, but I don’t. I’m not saying it’s a good idea. I’m not saying I recommend it, but that’s the only way I can do it. It keeps it enjoyable. Rather than writing the scene knowing what it’s going to be about, I’m finding out something I didn’t expect.
When you think of a spy drama, you think of something complex with heavy themes. The show has that, but there’s quite a bit of humor too. How did you strike that balance?
People are quite funny, usually when they’re not meaning to be. I think it’s just finding those moments of absurdity. What I like about a lot of these characters, especially Josh, is just that glimpse that they’re aware of their own absurdity. The way he delivers his lines is brilliant. They’re all brilliant. One minute somebody can be dead, dead, dead serious, and it’s all very dramatic, but as in life, something happens and it’s completely different. One of my favorite scenes is in the Charles de Gaulle airport where the American and the French meet and they all squabble over the phone. It’s just human beings being human, men being men. So I wanted to include that. These are people. This is not James Bond.
When did you learn Elisabeth Moss had signed on, and does that change how you write when you know who you’re writing for?
We got Elisabeth Moss after I finished the first one or two episodes. When you know you’ve got Elisabeth Moss, you are laughing. It’s like you’re stepping into a Ferrari. So yeah, it did make a huge difference knowing that she was playing Imogen. And the earlier you know, the better. It’s always good to, before you even start, know who you’re writing for.
You’ve worked with some of the greats – Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, now Moss. Is there anyone you’ve worked with who you knew, no matter what was on the page, they were going to add something extra to it?
I mean all of the above. It took me a while to learn this when I first started, because when you write something, you know exactly how it should be. You can hear it, the tone of voice, you know where the pause is, you know where the emphasis is, all of that stuff. And then in the early days you go, ‘Well, that’s wrong. That’s not how it should be.’ You realize that it’s different but better than what you had in your mind. So it takes a while to learn that. I’m sensitive about the words themselves being changed, but the way that the thing unfolds and the way that the actor deals with what’s going on — sometimes it’s a total surprise, and that’s what makes it great to watch. When you hand it over to the great actors… I’ve found that really good actors don’t change stuff on the day. There’s a sort of confidence about them.
At this point in your career, how long do you hold onto a project? Are you there from beginning to end, or do you hand over the scripts and get to work on something new?
Give the scripts and let it go. Stephen Frears said, ‘Get the best people and let them do their job.’ You’re handing this thing over as part of the process. The only thing that I want to be the case is that the script is a finished object. So when you pass it on, it’s not a blueprint, it’s not a suggestion. It doesn’t need to go through the system in terms of what the content is. It needs to go through the system in terms of how do you make that happen.
Has there been a story you’ve handed off that the final product was not what you expected – in a good or a bad way?
I mean, there’s nothing I can name, but obviously, especially early in one’s career, there are things that you hand over and then when you see them, they’re not what you expected. So you have to deal with that, but I’ve been incredibly lucky with the directors and actors that I’ve worked with where it’s a bloody good hit rate. Probably 85% I’ve been really happy [with].
For something like Peaky Blinders then, which has become its own universe at this point, how difficult is it for you to let go. I’d have to think that’s one you’re especially invested in.
It’s like handing your child over to somebody you trust. I’ve been working with most of the same people for 10 years, so I know they can do the right thing. But we’re shooting in September in Birmingham. So it’s all written, and I think it’s really, really good. It ties things up… and then leads to other things.
Back to The Veil, a big draw in watching is trying to suss out each character’s motives. Since you wrote them, do you think you’re good at reading people?
Depends on the people. People who believe what they’re saying is true, even though they sort of know it isn’t, but a part of them believes it — I imagine to be a good spy, you need to be able to actually believe that’s who you are. Maybe we’re all spies. I mean, maybe we all do that. In your life you’re sort of…
Seventeen days after Drake dropped “Push Ups,” his response to Kendrick Lamar’s “Like That,” Kendrick returned fire with disses of his own on his new record “Euphoria.” Kendrick’s response to Drake comes four days sooner than Drake’s own did, and the Compton rapper wasted no bars in the six-minute record. While Drake’s record took aim at Kendrick Lamar as well as took aim at names like Rick Ross, Future, Metro Boomin, Ja Morant, The Weeknd, Kendrick’s diss focuses solely on Drake. All in all, “Euphoria” is an excellently constructed response filled with double entendres that fire back at Drake in more ways than one.
Let’s break down all the disses and peel back the many layers that exist on the song:
“Euphoria” — the song title
The surface-level explanation for the song here is the feeling that Kendrick Lamar has as he puts out his response to Drake. As the artwork for the song reveals, “euphoria” is a “feeling of well-being or elation,” but it goes much deeper than that. Drake is an executive producer on Euphoria, a show centered on the experiences of high school students. Drake has been questioned by fans about his interactions with underage and young women all throughout his career. The most notable one came after Millie Bobby Brown, who was 13 at the time, gushed about her friendship with the rapper in an interview. “We just texted the other day and he was like ‘I miss you so much,’ and I was like ‘I miss you more!’” she said. Kendrick plays into these rumors and allegations with the song title.
“Everything they say about me is true…”
This line is said in reverse at the beginning of “Euphoria.” The audio is from the 1978 film The Wiz in a line said by Richard Pryor. The full line from the movie is “Everything they say about me is true, I’m a phony…” It’s the beginning of several lines in the song that question Drake’s character and authenticity.
“You not a rap artist, you a scam artist with the hopes of bеing accepted / Tommy Hilfiger stood out, but FUBU nеver had been your collection”
Kendrick continues to question Drake’s authenticity and even goes as far as to question Drake’s Blackness. Tommy Hilfilger was a prominent fashion brand in the hip-hop community during the 1990s, but by the following decade, Hilfiger was accused of being racist as he allegedly disapproved of hip-hop’s embrace of his brand. As a result, hip-hop artists dropped their support for Hilfiger in favor of supporting brands like FUBU. Kendrick casts doubt on Drake’s Blackness by alleging that Drake owned Tommy Hilfiger clothes as he believed it was needed to seem apart of the Black hip-hop community. However, as Kendrick alludes, if Drake was truly apart of the community, he also would’ve had FUBU in his closet, among other Black brands.
“How I make music that electrify ’em, you make music that pacify ’em / I can double down on that line, but spare you this time, that’s random acts of kindness”
Another reference to Drake’s interactions with underage and young women. Kendrick says his music gives people live, while Drake’s own calms people down and puts them to sleep, something a pacifier can help a child do. On the surface, this line is Kendrick’s way saying that Drake’s music is for kids, though he ackownledges a double entendre exists in the line. Despite that, Kendrick won’t go further on the topic, a moment of kindness that won’t be seen again for the rest of the diss track.
“The very first time I shot me a drac’, the homie had told me that “Aim it this way” / I didn’t point down enough, today I show you I learn from those mistakes”
Kendrick recalls the first time he shot a Draco pistol and admits that while he did not do it corrently back then, he eventually learned from those mistakes. Calling the Draco a “Drac,’” creates another double entendre, as it sounds like Kendrick is saying “Drake.” Kendrick is saying that his past jabs at Drake, weren’t good enough, but with “Euphoria,” he proved that he’s figured it all out.
Somebody had told that me you got a ring, on God, I’m ready to double the wage / I rather do that, than let a Canadian n**** make Pac turn in his grave”
Last summer, a report revealed that Drake purchased Tupac Shakur’s famed ring for the price of $1 million, three times more than the pre-sale estimate of between $200,000-$300,000. With this line, Kendrick says he ready to pay double for the ring as Drake possessing it is enough to make Tupac turn in his grave.
“Yeah, Cole and Aubrey know I’m a selfish n**** / The crown is heavy, huh / I pray they my real friends, if not, I’m YNW Melly”
Kendrick doesn’t want to share rap’s crown, and being that Drake and J. Cole have been atop the rap game beside him for years, Kendrick says his hip-hop counterparts are aware of his selfishness. In the end, Kendrick hopes Drake and Cole are his real friends, because if they aren’t, he’ll have to do away with them both as YNW Melly allegedly did to his two friends.
“I don’t like you poppin’ sh*t at Pharrell, for him, I inherit the beef / Yeah, f*ck all that pushin’ P, let me see you push a T / You better off spinnin’ again on him, you think about pushin’ me? / He’s Terrence Thornton, I’m Terence Crawford, yeah, I’m whoopin’ feet”
Kendrick wasn’t a fan of Drake dissing Pharrell on “Meltdown,” so he’s stepping in to respond for Pharrell. Kendrick doesn’t want Drake to diss Pharrell, he’d rather see him deliver his long-awaited response to Pusha T. Furthermore, Kendrick thinks it would be better for Drake to diss Pusha instead of him. Pusha T is Terrence Thornton (his birth name), but Kendrick is like undefeated boxing champion Terence Crawford, whose record is 40-0 (could be a sly reference to Drake’s longtime producer OVO 40). Kendrick will be “whoppin’ feet,” LA slang for beating up someone out of their shoes, in his battle with Drake.
“I know some sh*t about n**** that make Gunna Wunna look like a saint”
Kendrick essentially says if you think Gunna is a snitch in the YSL RICO case, wait till I tell you what I know about Drake and others.
I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk / I hate the way that you dress / I hate the way you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it’s gon’ be direct / We hate the b*tches you fuck, ’cause they confuse themselves with real women / And notice, I said “We”, it’s not just me, I’m what the culture feelin’”
Kendrick hates everything about Drake: the way he walks, talks, dresses, and sneak disses other artists. Kendrick also hates the woman Drake’s has sexual interactions with because they are not “real women.” This could be another jab at Drake’s alleged affinity for underage/young women as a “real woman” could be defined as a woman over 21 years of age. Kendrick then says that it’s not only him who believes it, but the rest of hip-hop or music culture.
You gon’ make a n**** bring back Puff, let me see if Chubbs really crash somethin’
Kendrick recalls the 2014 club incident where Diddy allegedly punched Drake during a fight in LIV Miami. Kendrick considers bringing Diddy into the battle to really strike fear into Drake. This would mean that Chubbs, Drake’s bodyguard, would have to step in and defend Drake. The Chubbs mention is also a response to him calling Kendrick a “little boy.” In a post to his Instagram Story in response to a rumored Drake diss from Kendrick at that time, Chubbs wrote, “Tell That Little Boy Drop!!! But He Won’t.” Well. He did.
Yeah, my first one like my last one, it’s a classic, you don’t have one / Let your core audience stomach that / Didn’t tell ’em where you get your abs from”
Kendrick brags about having classic albums, something he says Drake does not have. He goes on to say that Drake’s fans need to stomach, or accept, the fact Drake doesn’t have a classic album. As if that wasn’t enough, Kendrick then mocks Drake for allegedly getting liposuction surgery in order to have a six-pack core, a fact he seemingly tries to keep hidden.
“Headshot for the year, you better walk around like Daft Punk”
An amazing double entendre!! Kendrick says his bars on “Euphoria” are the equivalent of Drake receiving a gunshot to the head. The head injuries will force Drake to hide his wounds and “walk around like Daft Punk,” the French electronic music duo known for wearing robot-lie helmets. Kendrick is also saying the “headshot” diss make Drake a “daft punk” dur to his brain injuries. Daft by definition is “silly; foolish” while punk means “a worthless person.” Thanks to “Euphoria,” Drake is now a silly, foolish, and worthless person according to Kendrick.
Surprised you wanted that feature request / You know that we got some sh*t to address
Kendrick suggests that Drake reached out to him for a guest verse (allegedly for “First Person Shooter“) despite their ongoing beef, a request that shocked Kendrick.
I’m knowin’ they call you The Boy, but where is a man? ‘Cause I ain’t see him yet
Kendrick is back to questioning Drake’s character, using the Toronto rapper’s nickname as “The Boy” to point to Drake’s inability to be a man.
“When I see you stand by Sexyy Red, I believe you see two bad bitches / I believe you don’t like women, that’s real competition, you might pop ass with ’em”
In recent months, Drake has been spotted with Sexyy Red on multiple occasions. Kendrick believes Drake wants to be like Sexyy Red and other female rappers. A line later, Kendrick goes on to say that Drake doesn’t like women and sees them as competition, enough to shake ass as some do in their videos, performances, and social media posts.
“Let’s speak on percentage, show me your splits / I make sure I double back with you / You was signed to a n**** that’s signed to a n**** that said he was signed to that n**** / Try cease and desist on the ‘Like That’ record / Hoe, what? You ain’t like that record?”
Kendrick responds to Drake’s claim that Kendrick was being extorted in his previous record deal with TDE and reminds Drake that once signed to Young Money under Cash Money Records which is under Universal Music Group. The “that n****” may be Birdman who was sued by Lil Wayne and accused of withholding profits and refusing to release his Tha Carter V album. Next, Kendrick accusses Drake of sending a cease and desist letter for Future & Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” which Kendrick appears on and used to diss Drake in his verse. This isn’t the first time Drake was accused of sending a cease and desist letter to another rapper.
“‘Back To Back’, I like that record / I’ma get back to that for the record / Why would I call around tryna get dirt on n****s? / Y’all think all of my life is rap?
That’s hoe sh*t, I got a son to raise, but I can see you know nothin’ ’bout that / Wakin’ them up, know nothin’ ’bout that / And tell ’em to pray, know nothin’ ’bout that / And givin’ ’em tools to walk through life like day by day, know nothin’ ’bout that / Teachin’ the morals, and take all the discipline, listen man, you don’t know nothin’ ’bout that / Speakin’ the truth and consider what God’s considerin’, you don’t know nothin’ ’bout that”
Kendrick shows love to Drake’s “Back To Back” record, which the Toronto rapper released in 2016 in response to Meek Mill’s ghostwriter claims against him, but explaining why he would never go on a search for dirt on Drake. Kendrick says fatherhood — something he believes Drake is failing at in multiple ways — occpuies too much of his time, making it impossible for him to find the dirt that would be useful for a diss. “Euphoria” proves that Kendrick didn’t need that dirt.
“Ain’t twenty-v-one, it’s one-v-twenty if I gotta smack n****s that write with you”
Since Meek Mill’s ghostwriting accusations against Drake in 2016, the Torono rapper has been unable to shake off claims that he does not write all of his music. So in response to Drake’s “What the f*ck is this, a twenty-v-one, n****?” line on “Push-Ups,” Kendrick corrects Drake and says it will actually be him against Drake and his ghostwriters if things get more violent.
“Am I battlin’ ghost or AI? N**** feelin’ like Joel Osteen / Funny, he was in a film called ‘AI’ /And my sixth sense tellin’ me to off him”
Kendrick responds to Drake’s “Taylor Made Freestyle” which featured AI verses by Snoop Dogg and Tupac from Drake, by asking if he’s battling AI or a ghost, instead of a real-life rapper. He then likens himself to Joel Osteen, though he actually meant Haley Joel Osment, the child actor who starred in the films The Sixth Sense and AI: Artificial Intelligence. Our own Aaron Williams dove into the connection to Haley Joel Osment in his ranking of the disses on “Euphoria.”
“Yeah, OVO n****s is d*ck riders / Tell ’em run to America to imitate heritage, they can’t imitate this violence”
Kendrick disses Drake’s OVO crew and suggest that they all left Canadian and came to the US to appropriate the culture in the states. Probablem is, as Kendrick says, they’re unable imitate everything including Kendrick’s level of aggression and violence on “Euphoria.”
“Don’t speak on the family, crodie / It can get deep in the family, crodie / Talk about me and my family, crodie? / Someone go bleed in your family, crodie”
Kendrick warns Drake about dissing his loved ones as things will get violent if the Toronto native decides to ignore his warning. Kendrick also mocks Drake by using a Toronto accent and the word “crodie,” a crip variation of “brodie” that Toronto rapper and member of the crip Wassa gang, in these bars.
“Whoever that’s f*ckin’ with him, f*ck you n****s, and f*ck the industry too”
Drake’s friends and the overall industry won’t stop Kendrick from going to war, and he’s ready to battle anyone who wants to stand beside Drake.
I’ll admit that I’m pretty tough on Burger King. The fast food chain routinely ranks on the low end of our fast food rankings. Almost always. For what it’s worth, it’s not because I have some sort of weird agenda against Burger King. If anything, BK is the chain I have the most nostalgia for. It’s the one restaurant I always wanted to eat at when I was really young.
I was not a McDonald’s kid, I was fully a card-carrying member of the Burger King Kids Club. The BKKC as I like to call it. I’m not using the words “card-carrying” as some sort of turn of phrase, either. There was an actual card (the 90s were weird like that).
Point being that I want Burger King to succeed. Desperately. And here’s the good news — recent menu items show that a BK comeback might be in the cards.
So to help add some shine to the crown, we’re naming the five absolute best menu items at Burger King for a guaranteed great meal. These menu staples represent the best at BK, so you can order them in confidence. Let’s dive in.
Double Whopper
Burger King
Why It’s Great:
Who doesn’t appreciate a big burger?
The Double Whopper is excessive in the way the best fast food is. A combination of two grilled beef patties and two slices of American cheese (optional, but get the cheese!), topped with tomato, lettuce, mayo, ketchup, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun, The beef has that charred flame-grilled flavor that BK is famous for, while the produce is cut thick and has a lot of texture and crispiness to it (the pickles are especially notable, with a nice brine-y tang).
The Whopper is BK’s flagship burger, and compared to something like McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder or Wendy’s Dave’s Double, it just feels like you get more here. My issue with the basic Whopper is that it’s too bread-heavy to really be enjoyable, so I think that extra meat patty really makes a marked difference in the experience.
If that’s still not enough for you, there is always the Triple Whopper.
The Bottom Line:
The burger that made BK famous.
Halfsies
Uproxx
Why It’s Great:
Apparently, Burger King calls this 50-50 mix of fried onion rings and french fries “halfsies,” when they could’ve just called them by the obviously superior name, “Frings.” But, I’ll try not to hold that against them.
I don’t have too much to say about this dish, French fries are delicious, and so are onion rings — thanks to BK for making it so that we don’t have to choose. More fast food places should have fried onion rings, and they should all allow us to order frings.
The fries are good, they aren’t McDonald’s, but they’re nicely salted and have a good crunch to them. The onion rings are the star here though, they’re greasy in the best way, and have the sweet subtle buttery flavor that’s characteristic of fried onions.
The Bottom Line:
Why have to choose between onion rings and fries when you can just have both?
Chicken Fries
Uproxx
Why It’s Great:
Chicken Fries are pretty unique. They’re not quite chicken nuggets (though they have that highly processed texture) and they’re certainly not chicken tenders because they aren’t whole cuts of chicken, so what the hell are they? They’re chicken fries! I’m not completely in love with the texture, but the breading on this stuff features the best blend of spices on the entire Burger King menu.
At first bite, these things are incredibly zesty, with notes of paprika, black pepper, and onion powder. Those flavors are a natural pair for BK’s BBQ sauce which adds a slightly spicy flavor to the breading, with some gentle sweet smokey notes.
The Bottom Line:
The meat-to-breading ratio makes this processed nugget snack a different experience than a chicken nugget. Thanks to a flavorful breading, eating these things is a joy.
Rodeo Burger
Uproxx
Why It’s Great:
Every fast food chain needs, what I like to call, a “decadent burger.” This is a burger that throws caution to the wind and stacks sodium on sodium, carb on carb, it’s a burger that doesn’t care if you live or die and while I wouldn’t recommend eating these things daily (or even once a week) giving in can taste delicious. The Rodeo Burger is that burger.
This thing is simple. You’ve got a beef patty smothered in BBQ sauce, and topped with fried onion rings on a sesame seed bun. It’s beefy, smokey, sweet, salty, buttery, savory, crunchy — it attempts to hit all five senses of taste and delivers a great texture. If this thing had a Shiitake mushroom in it, we could’ve hit umami.
The Bottom Line:
Burger King’s decadent masterpiece.
Fiery Buffalo Nuggets
Uproxx
Why It’s Great:
One of BK’s new menu additions, the Fiery Buffalo Nuggets is reason alone to take a trip to the BK drive-thru. These nuggets have a strong pungent buffalo sauce aroma. Because they’re tossed in sauce, they lose just a bit of the crunch you’d expect from a chicken nugget, but what you get instead is a tangy buffalo flavor complemented by some earthy black pepper.
What I like to do is dip these nuggets in BK’s ranch to add an extra savory herbal quality to the flavor profile.
The Bottom Line:
BK’s newest menu item. A tangy-saucy spin on BK’s chicken nuggets.
With the New York Knicks looking to close out the first round of the NBA playoffs against the Philadelphia 76ers tonight, Sixers all-star Joel Embiid has been declared the “Most Hated Man in NY,” as declared by no less an authority than The New York Post’s front page. This hatred was confirmed by New York’s State Twitter page (I will NEVER call it “X”), which not only reposted the cover from a Knickerbockers fan page, but added some spice of its own courtesy of Kendrick Lamar’s new Drake diss, “Euphoria.”
The new song has no shortage of salt for the Compton rapper’s Canadian foe, but at one point, he dispenses with the fancy wordplay and heady metaphors to distill his argument down to its bare bones: “Now let me say I’m the biggest hater / I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk / I hate the way that you dress / I hate the way that you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it’s gon’ be direct,” he snarls in the snippet posted by @NYGov. If the Sixers win, Embiid might need the National Guard to provide security (maybe they can take a break from beating up 20-year-olds at Columbia for exercising their First Amendment rights). Which just goes to show how serious it is — do you know how bad it has to be for the GOVERNMENT of the state of New York to quote a Los Angeles-bred rapper’s diss track?
Sports rivalries aside, it looks like Kendrick Lamar has given the world the best new way to tell somebody you dislike them: just send them a “Euphoria” snippet, and they’ll get the message, guaranteed.
Electronic favorite Jon Hopkins last dropped an album in 2021, when he unveiled Music For Psychedelic Therapy. That was his sixth LP, and now his seventh is on the way: Today (April 30), he announced Ritual.
He also shared a video for “Ritual (Evocation),” and the song is cinematic, menacing, and intimidating. The song is actually a portion of the single 41-minute piece that is the album, which a press release says is “personified by depth and contrast” and “taps into an ancient and primal energy.”
Hopkins shared a lengthy statement about the project, saying:
“I have no idea what I’m doing when I’m composing. I don’t know where it’s coming from, and I don’t know where it’s going, nor does it seem to matter. I just know when it is finished. So all I can really do is feel my way to the end, then try and retrospectively analyze what might be going on, and try and figure out what its purpose is. What is clear is that this one has the structure of a Ritual. I know what that Ritual is for me, but it will be something different for you. It feels important not to be prescriptive about what this Ritual actually is.
It feels like a tool, maybe even a machine, for opening portals within your inner world, for unlocking things that are hidden and buried. Things that are held in place by the tension in your body. It doesn’t feel like ‘an album’ therefore – more a process to go through, something that works on you. At the same time, it feels like it tells a story. Maybe it’s the story of a process I’m going through, and one that we are all going through. Maybe it’s also the story of creation, destruction and transcendence. Maybe it’s the story of the archetypal hero’s journey — the journey of forgetting and remembering.
Ultimately though, all I have to say about it is said by the sound.”
Watch the “Ritual (Evocation)” video above and find the Ritual cover art and tracklist below, as well as Hopkins’ upcoming tour dates.
Jon Hopkins’ Ritual Album Cover Artwork
Domino
Jon Hopkins’ Ritual Tracklist
1. “Part I — Altar”
2. “Part II — Palace / Illusion”
3. “Part III — Transcend / Lament”
4. “Part IV — The Veil”
5. “Part V — Evocation”
6. “Part VI — Solar Goddess Return”
7. “Part VII — Dissolution”
8. “Part VIII — Nothing Is Lost”
John Hopkins 2024 Tour Dates
07/25 — Brighton, UK @ The Corn Exchange
07/26 — Bristol, UK @ Bristol Beacon
07/27 — London, UK @ Junction 2 Festival
08/16 — Bristol Beacons, UK @ Green Man Festival
Ritual is out 8/30 via Domino. Find more information here.
The Seinfeld creator recently spoke to The New Yorker about the state of comedy in 2024. Like all 70 year old, he has his finger on the pulse. “It used to be, you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, Cheers is on. Oh, M*A*S*H is on. Oh, Mary Tyler Moore is on. All in the Family is on.’ You just expected, There’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what — where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people,” he said.
The Pop Tarts movie director later pointed out a Seinfeld plot that he thinks couldn’t be done these days, because of woke. “We did an episode of the series in the nineties,” he said, “where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless people pull rickshaws because, as he says, ‘They’re outside anyway.’ Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?”
It’s hard to disprove someone’s point in one word, but Rob McElhenney found a way. He tweeted a photo of frequently unhoused degenerate Rickety Cricket, a recurring character on the brilliantly tasteless yet still popular comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Maybe Jerry needs someone to offer him an egg in this trying time?
When John Mulaney announced that he would be hosting a string of live Netflix specials titled Everybody’s In LA, surely nobody thought he would be getting literally everybody in LA to participate. But he is trying his best to cover all his bases by revealing 30+ of the most random assortment of guests, meaning there is something here for everyone! And Weezer!
According to Netflix, the “comically unconventional” show will feature both famous and non-famous guests, and viewers will tag along with Mulaney as he films around Los Angeles. The streamer announced some of the guests, which will include late night icon David Letterman, comedy hater Jerry Seinfeld, and future Cat In The Hat star, Bill Hader. It’s fun for the whole dysfunctional family.
Ready for more? Other guests include Nate Bargatze, Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, Jon Stewart, Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias, Ray J, Mae Martin, Earthquake, Stavros Halkias, Ronny Chieng, Tom Segura, Cassandra Peterson, Luenell, Hannah Gadsby, Cedric the Entertainer, Los Lobos, and horror movie icon John Carpenter, who now has the time to do stuff like this since Halloween ended.
For music fans, Weezer, Flea, Joyce Manor (?!), St. Vincent, Warren G, and Beck will also make appearances.
If that’s not enough, Mulaney also promises some surprises. “There will be more guests as well but we are tired of listing them,” Mulaney told Netflix. “We have given you enough information already.”
John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s In LA will premiere on Netflix on May 3rd at 10 p.m. EST, with further episodes streaming nightly from May 6 through May 10.
By its nature, live music is unpredictable. There can be technical difficulties, a surprise guest might come out for a song or two, or the power can go it. Still, there are some things you can know before heading into a concert environment, or at least things you can predict based on previous data. One of those factors that tends to remain pretty much the same is what time you can expect an artist to take the stage. Well, Justin Timberlake just launched a tour, so…
What Time Is Justin Timberlake On Stage For The Forget Tomorrow World Tour?
One user on Reddit reported that at Timberlake’s April 29 concert in Vancouver, a DJ played from 8:15 p.m. to 9:05, then Timberlake was on from 9:15 to 11:15, so two hours of stage time for JT.
Kendrick Lamar’s new song “Euphoria” has rap fans on social media buzzing, but not just for its inventive Drake disses. While the song’s references to Drake’s foibles and flaws have fans dissecting their favorite lines, one in particular has them scratching their heads instead.
Although pop culture references have never been Kendrick’s strong suit, he name-checks the child actor from the films The Sixth Sense and AI: Artificial Intelligence to undercut Drake’s use of AI to utilize deceased rapper Tupac’s voice in his “Taylor Made Freestyle.” At least, he thinks he does — because the name Kendrick actually checked is Joel Osteen, the controversial televangelist whose Texas megachurch drew negative headlines for how it handled its Hurricane Harvey response in 2017. The name he apparently meant to say is Haley Joel Osment, who achieved cultural ubiquity for his reading of the iconic line “I see dead people” in the 1999 thriller The Sixth Sense.
Did this man confuse Joel Olsteen with Haley Joel Osment
i just wish i was in the room as a movie expert to let Kendrick know that he mixed up Joel Osteen (the televangelist preacher) with Haley Joel Osment (the child actor who starred in A.I. and The 6th Sense) other than that though? no notes. 9/10. madness.
As fans remark on the hilarious mix-up, one joke that keeps recurring is the similarity to Abbott Elementary character Barbara Howard. One of the show’s teachers played by Sheryl Lee Ralph, Mrs. Howard is the center of a running gag in which she regularly confuses white celebrities’ names, but everyone else can usually figure out who she really means. Examples include Brian Austin Green (Bryan Tyree Henry), Carrie Underwood (Keri Washington), and Tommy Lee Jones (James Earl Jones). Check out some more responses below:
— a.s.f. aint doin shit (@asfaintdoinshit) April 30, 2024
Kendrick confusing Haley Joel Osment with Joel Osteen is so fucking funny, he didn’t even Google shit, just walked into the booth mad as hell lmaooo https://t.co/ibu9xq3FvR
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