Since people began speculating about them in January 2022, Halle Bailey and DDG have been open about their relationship. In August 2022, Bailey told Essenceshe was “for sure” in love with DDG, noting she’d “been a fan of his for years.” That November, DDG gushed about The Little Mermaid star in a way that incidentally foreshadowed the rumors swirling around the couple almost exactly one year later.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m married,” DDG said on The Breakfast Club. “Nah, I ain’t really married, but you know what I mean.” The rapper added that he figured he’d “eventually” marry Bailey. Well, did it happen?
On Wednesday, October 18, Glamour UKnamed Bailey its “Women Of The Year Awards 2023 Gen-Z Game-Changer honoree.” According to Pop Base, the accompanying cover story initially misattributed a pull-quote to Bailey that actually belonged to fellow cover star Leigh-Anne Pinnock. The quote reads, “Being a mum, being newly married — there’s the positive side of it, but also the negative. I want to show that, although things might look perfect from the exterior, that’s not always the case.”
Glamour Magazine seems to have incorrectly placed a quote from their interview with Leigh Anne on their interview with Halle Bailey, which implied that Halle was married to DDG and expecting their first child. pic.twitter.com/qHB2a7DcjE
Here is, broadly, what we all understand the state of play to be on a James Harden trade to the Los Angeles Clippers: Harden wants L.A., L.A. wants Harden, and because no one else seems interested in bringing him on board, so the Clippers don’t want to offer anything and everything, which most notably includes Terance Mann, who the Sixers really want.
Harden escalated things a bit on Wednesday by not showing up to practice, and it’s unclear if or when he’ll start showing up ahead of the start of the season next week. It’s a messy situation that seems to be at a bit of a stalemate, something that Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported in the aftermath of Harden’s no-show. And in a piece by Sam Amick of The Athletic on Wednesday evening, we learned that Sixers executive Daryl Morey is questioning just how badly the Clippers want to get a Harden trade across the finish line.
Despite the Sixers indicating that they would accept an offer of a Clippers’ unprotected first-round pick, first-round pick swap, players to match the salaries and Mann, two people involved in the negotiations say Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank reiterated the team’s stance that Mann would not be part of their offer. Morey, those people say, expressed his disbelief and accused the Clippers of being “unserious” about getting a deal done.
The Clippers will begin their season on Oct. 25 against the Portland Trail Blazers, while the Sixers will begin theirs on Oct. 26 against the Milwaukee Bucks. It’s unclear if trade talks will ramp up in the days leading up to the beginning of the year.
Lil Yachty is the featured artist on “Another Late Night” from Drake’s newly No. 1For All The Dogs album. Within his verse, he crassly raps, “I let her go, she fine as hell but baby wasn’t stylish / She had big t*ts like Billie Eilish, but she couldn’t sing (Drip).”
On Wednesday, October 18, Eilish posted an Instagram carousel to remind everyone that nothing gets by her. The second of 10 photos is a screenshot of Yachty’s bar about her. The carousel also revealed a gigantic back tattoo, running from the nape of her neck clear down to her lower back.
Eilish’s spontaneous Instagram candids will have to satisfy her fans for now, as she recently confirmed on Westwood One’s The Cookout that “there is no documentary” in her immediate plans, though she left the door open for one “someday.”
Like many in Hollywood, Mark Hamill is no fan of the 45th president. The erstwhile Luke Skywalker has never been shy about slamming Donald Trump, not the least when the big guy lost re-election nearly three years back. But though he disagrees with just about everything he stands for, he finally found an issue about which they agree.
As per HuffPost, Trump was in Iowa earlier this week, doing his usual self-pitying business during a campaign stop (in between complaining about voluntarily showing up at his New York trial, that is). At one point during his speech, the former president reflected on the very real possibility that he could be thrown in the clink. But he had come to accept his fate, for the alleged good of the country.
“I am willing to go to jail if that’s what it takes for our country to win and become a democracy again,” Trump told the crowd — a statement that earned him an unlikely ally.
“On this issue you have my complete & unqualified support,” Hamill tweeted.
Mind you, Trump wasn’t referring to the civil fraud trial in New York. He was addressing the narrow gag order imposed upon him by the judge overseeing his 2020 election subversion case in Washington, all because he keeps threatening judges, prosecutors, witnesses, and other people he’s legally not supposed to be mentioning. It’s hard to keep track of the guy’s many criminal cases!
(Spoilers for Justified and Justified: City Primeval will be found below.)
Justified: City Primeval ended on a high note, albeit a deliciously ambiguous note. Not only did Raylan (of course) take out Clement Mansell and return to Florida, where he retired from the U.S. Marshals Service, but we also got to see Boyd Crowder. That squirrelly little Dairy Queen fanatic was smooching a lady prison guard and escaped custody (with her) while supposedly en route to medical treatment. Raylan got the phone call at the end of the limited series, and we don’t know if he picked up or not, which is part of the fun.
Goggins (who previously had discussed Dairy Queen with our own Brian Grubb) had also previously spoken with our own Jason Tabrys and skillfully made sure the cameo didn’t leak ahead of time. “[I]t was not the time” came up in conversation, but tellingly (in retrospect), Goggins also declared, “I’ll be watching it all the way to the bitter end. How about yourself? Will you be watching it to the end?”
Well, “the end” is when Boyd showed up on the scene. Fast forward to this week, and co-showrunner Michael Dinner reflected to EW about how “everybody [on the team] would like” more Justified, which would not be City Primeval if it happened but more on par with the original series’ vibe. However, “it’s up to the network. Walton’s interested, and Tim’s interested, and we think there’s another chapter in Raylan’s life, but what are the needs of FX?”
So it’s all TBA, but Dinner did remark upon how Goggins did his damndest not give his appearance away, even though he didn’t enjoy “lying”:
[L]ook, poor Walton had to lie through his teeth. We had to do a little bit here and there, but because of the strike there wasn’t as much press — we didn’t have to stand on a red carpet and tell everybody [lies] about how it didn’t feel right [to bring him back for City Primeval]. But Walton, at that point, the actors had not struck yet, and he was doing all this press for Gemstones, and he called us after two days of press and was like, ‘I just spent two days lying to every journalist on the face of the planet that “‘it just wasn’t the time.’” So a lot of credit to him for sticking to his guns.
Additionally, co-showrunner Dave Andron discussed how they cast his wife, Ahna O’Reilly, as the lady prison guard. This went well onscreen, but also this:
And then I realized after that first take that I was about to watch Walton kiss my wife. I was like, “Oh … right. I really forgot that I was going to watch my wife make out with Walton Goggins today.” But I have to say, if it were any actor in the world, I felt okay about it being Walton.
Awkward for Dave Andron, yes, but the results were worth it. And fingers crossed for more Boyd and Raylan on our screens.
It’s been five years since his last album Indigo, but now, Jack Tatum is back as Wild Nothing — and he’s not holding back.
Much has changed for Tatum in the past five years. For one, he became a first-time parent during the pandemic, an experience that transformed his worldview completely. “Bringing new life into the world drastically changes how you define yourself and what your purpose is,” Tatum said in a statement. “Before, I wrapped up so much of myself in my music and all of it, the writing, the traveling. That was really who I thought I was. The double whammy of having a kid and not being able to do that anymore—it exposed a lot about what is important to me. It made me understand much better why people gravitate to divine beliefs or why it feels so good to attempt to have an answer.”
Enter Hold, Wild Nothing’s upcoming album (out October 27 on Captured Tracks). With 11 dance-inspired tracks drenched with the 80s synth pop sound Wild Nothing has become synonymous with, Hold explores existential questions of ego, suburbia, and making the “right” life choices. Ahead of the release of Hold, Tatum sits down with Uproxx to talk Tom Petty, roasting celebrity houses, and family vacations in our latest Q&A.
What are four words you would use to describe your music?
Earnest, Measured, Pensive, Cumulative.
It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?
Bleak Uproxx! I guess I’ll be just praying that teenagers will inexplicably get really into 2010s dream pop? I think it’s more likely that there will just be some old folks like me who are reminded of their youth and that’s a happy enough thought.
Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?
Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout is someone who I really respect on a number of different levels. First off just a phenomenal songwriter, both lyrically and melodically. He strikes me as someone who has been very aspirational but also very grounded in reality and with a certain humility over the course of his career. There’s only been a handful of people who have made this kind of brainy pop music with integrity in my opinion and he’s one of them.
Where did you eat the best meal of your life and what was it?
My wife and I have built up this whole mythology about a meal we had in Savannah once. We had a hummus made out of green peanuts that was honestly so good that we’re always just like, “Did this really happen? Did we make this up??”. It was served with celery for God’s sake. The rest of the meal was fine, pretty unremarkable. I don’t even think the restaurant exists anymore. The whole thing sounds so boring and doesn’t make any sense and yet we both somehow agree on this being the best thing we’ve ever eaten.
Tell us about the best concert you’ve ever attended.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at Bonnaroo in 2013. Generally speaking I’m pretty anti-festival as a viewing experience and it was raining nearly the whole time but I barely noticed cause it was just HIT after HIT after HIT.
What song never fails to make you emotional?
“Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” by Broken Social Scene reminds me so much of being a teenager that I find it borderline uncomfortable to listen to. Definitely going through a bit of a ballad phase right now, “Why” by Annie Lennox and “Nightswimming” by REM both threaten to bring out the waterworks.
What’s the last thing you Googled?
I mean, honestly the Bonnaroo lineup for 2013 because my memory sucks.
Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?
On our first European tour a German promoter “hooked us up” with a guy who had a place for us to crash. We walk in and it’s a completely empty flat with the exception of like 3 mattresses on the ground with no sheets and what looked like a wedding dress nailed to the wall. Just insane. Needless to say, I did not sleep super well.
What’s your favorite city in the world to perform and what’s the city you hope to perform in for the first time?
We’ve only had one headlining show in Mexico City but it was definitely the most intense I’ve ever felt in terms of the response from an audience. We’ve been pretty lucky travel wise honestly. I’ve scratched off most of my bucket list thanks to Wild Nothing but I’d still love to make it to Auckland, Seoul, and Rio de Janeiro at some point.
What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?
Stop stressing about who you’re going to be in 5 years and just enjoy being a kid who doesn’t need to have anything figured out yet.
What’s one of your hidden talents?
I don’t have enough talents to keep any of them a secret.
If you had a million dollars to donate to charity, what cause would you support and why?
I couldn’t tell you specifically but I think it would most likely be something involving mental health support. I think so many people in America that desperately need support of some kind either have a stigma against it or simply feel it’s unavailable to them. I’ve personally been in that boat and I’m really ready for the conversation around mental health access to change on a systemic level.
What are your thoughts about AI and the future of music?
I think it’s fairly innocuous at the moment but once you start looking a few years ahead it gets scarier. I don’t really worry about it so much in terms of damaging the landscape of real people making music. Making and listening to music will be a part of human culture as long as it exists in my opinion and having indistinguishable AI music floating around won’t change that but I do worry about it in terms of how music is currently monetized and the ways in which it will limit opportunities for people to make a living creating music.
You are throwing a music festival. Give us the dream lineup of 5 artists that will perform with you and the location it would be held.
Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, The Blue Nile, Air, and Milton Nascimento at the Minack Theatre in Cornwall. In this dream I would not be performing, I would just be watching and crying. And like hopefully there’s good catering or whatever.
Who’s your favorite person to follow on social media?
Currently it’s watching @thedanrosen roast celebrity houses.
What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?
Blank slate over here.
What is your pre-show ritual?
I feel like the truth is that we all just take turns going to the bathroom being like oh sh*t, gotta pee, time to play the show, oh sh*t. I’ll do my pretend opera singer warm ups or whatever. There’s no like 90’s kids sport movie huddles going on in the Wild Nothing green room or anything. Usually.
Who was your first celebrity crush?
Larisa Oleynik. Something about Alex Mack morphing into a blob of goo set my tiny heart aflame.
You have a month off and the resources to take a dream vacation. Where are you going and who is coming with you?
My idea of what constitutes a good vacation has changed very drastically since becoming a parent. In another life I would stuff as many things into a trip as humanly possible and avoid beaches whenever possible but not anymore. I’d take the family. Plop us down in Sardinia. Give me a little umbrella on the water. Clearly all these centenarians are doing something right.
What is your biggest fear?
I mean, my legitimate biggest fears are better left off the pages of Uproxx but I will tell you that I sincerely hate submerged man made objects. The propeller room of the Queen Mary in Long Beach is the most wretched, horrifying place I’ve ever been and even just thinking about it makes me queasy.
Hold is out 10/27 via Captured Tracks. Find more information here.
Black Mirror has spent the last dozen years preying on tech fears. The British show has scaremongered about clones, about various terrifying eye-related gizmos, about social media, about choose-your-own adventure games, about sociopaths who bully their way into elected office. Some of it has even already come true! But there’s one dangerous tech that show creator Charlie Brooker isn’t losing much sleep over. And believe it or not, it’s AI.
Per The Guardian, Brooker appeared at a SXSW even in Sydney Wednesday, where he elaborated upon a story he told earlier this year, in which he asked ChatGPT to produce a Black Mirror episode. It didn’t go well.
At first he was on edge, saying that “the first couple of sentences you feel a cold spike of fear, like animal terror,” like he was “being f*cking replaced.”
Alas, his anxiety was short-lived. “Then as it carries on you go, ‘Oh this is boring. I was frightened a sec ago, now I’m bored because this is so derivative,’” Brooker recalled. He went on:
“It’s just emulating something. It’s Hoovered up every description of every<em> Black Mirror</em> episode, presumably from Wikipedia and other things that people have written, and it’s just sort of vomiting that back at me. It’s pretending to be something it isn’t capable of being.”
While Brooker acknowledged that AI is here to stay, it can’t be used for everything.
“I can’t quite see it replacing messy people,” Brooker said of AI’s ability to create something original.
So rest easy, writers of TV and movies and video games and whatnot. Or maybe don’t, because as Black Mirror has taught us, technology can always pull a fast one on messy humans.
Netflix didn’t have a great 2022. The streaming giant that started it all finally started shedding subscribers in droves. Attempts to crack down on password sharing and introduce an ad-supported version got off to rough starts. But the company soldiered and their reward has been two encouraging quarterly reports in a row. On an unrelated note, they’re raising rates again.
Per Deadline, Netflix revealed that they’re jacking up some — but not all — of their subscription prices, effective immediately. Again, it doesn’t affect everyone — only those in the U.S., the U.K., and France. It also doesn’t affect every plan. The Standard one ($15.99) and the one with ads ($6.99) will stay the same.
But those with Premium — which allows things like downloads on six devices and the option to add two extra members who don’t live with you — will see their plan shoot up from $19.99 to $22.99. Likewise, the Basic plan — which allows one user and which is being phased out, with no new subscribers allowed — will increase from $9.99 to $11.99.
The rate increases come the same day as Varietyreported that Netflix had a great Q3. The last four months has seen the streamer gain a whopping 8.76 million new subscribers, bring the total to 247.15 million. In a letter to shareholders, Netflix brass credited their ad plan, with membership up 70% from the previous quarter.
The number is up from their also successful Q2, when paid subscribers rose by 5.89 million, bringing the total up 8% from the previous year.
Of course, while the WGA strike was resolved last month, SAG-AFTRA is still out on the picket lines, meaning Netflix is still unable to make new scripted content to entertain those new subscribers. Then again, they can still exhume older stuff, like the wildly popular Suits, which features a semi-member of the Royal Family.
The festival’s 2023 edition at Hollywood Park was headlined by Future, Playboi Carti, and Travis Scott, and according to a press release, was the first ever music festival held at the venue. It was also the first Rolling Loud to take place in LA since 2019, with the fest relocating to nearby San Bernardino for the December 2021 edition of the fest. The organizers decided to forego 2022 dates in lieu of securing a first-quarter weekend at the pristine new location, also launching its LoudPunx NFT initiative offering lifetime access and festival exclusives.
2024 also marks the 10th anniversary of Rolling Loud, with celebrations throughout the year, with more details to be revealed alongside lineups and headliners. Rolling Loud’s organizers say they plan a full World Tour, returning to the festival’s hometown, Miami, as well as Europe and more. As always, you can get more information at RollingLoud.com.
The Houston Rockets are expected to be one of the teams taking the biggest steps forward this season after a major overhaul this summer that started with hiring Ime Udoka as head coach and continued with the signings of Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks (among others) in free agency.
The youth movement in Houston is still going on, but those young players now have an infrastructure around them to provide the needed support to start winning basketball games. The “talent acquisition” phase for the Rockets should be over and, with what they hope is an environment more conducive to winning, the real evaluation of guys like Jalen Green, Alperen Sengun, Jabari Smith Jr., Amen Thompson, and Tari Eason can begin. The Rockets are almost assuredly going to win more games and be more competitive this year, but it will require a massive leap forward to go beyond that to fight for a Play-In spot in the very crowded Western Conference. If that is to happen, one major question looms and one of their young players holds the key to unlocking a higher ceiling.
Biggest Question: How Big A Leap Can They Take On Defense?
The reason Udoka was hired was to bring a defensive identity to a team that has been lacking one for two years. It’s also why VanVleet was the target over James Harden in free agency, and why they are willing to deal with Dillon Brooks’ at times frustrating antics to bring in an All-Defense caliber wing. It’d be hard not to take a step forward defensively from last year, when they were 29th in defensive rating (per Basketball-Reference), but it remains to be seen how big that step can be.
At this point, they should have enough on the perimeter and wing to be able to always have a couple good defenders on the floor at all times, which is a considerable upgrade from where they’ve been. VanVleet and Brooks are proven pests on the perimeter, while Eason and Thompson have the frames, athleticism, and profile to be very good on that end, they just need the structure around them. The real question on defense is whether they have enough rim protection, as they weren’t able to land the defensive upgrade they hoped for in free agency when Brook Lopez balked and returned to the Bucks. As such, Sengun will be back starting at the five, where he doesn’t provide much in terms of rim deterrence (0.9 blocks per game a year ago) but also was not being helped much at all by a very leaky point of attack defense.
Houston will be a really interesting test of how much improving your point of attack defense can raise your defensive level overall if you still lack elite rim protection. Sengun shouldn’t be left on islands trying to cover two guys at once as much as last year and can focus more on being in the right position, which should help him be more effective, but there’s a ceiling to his impact on that end. They have a chance to be special offensively if things click for enough of their youngsters at once, but they’ll need to climb out of the bottom third of the league on defense to have a chance at a really surprising leap into Play-In contention.
X-Factor: Alperen Sengun
As noted in the above section, Sengun holds a lot of importance to this team because they are going to need him to be at least passable on defense. It’s certainly possible he gets there with better structure around him, as he has good hands and could be disruptive in his own way without being a dominant paint defender. The reason that’s so important is because he is the one that unlocks a lot of what this team can be on the offensive end. There will, rightfully, be a lot of attention paid to Green and Smith Jr.’s development this season, as both need to take strides forward in terms of efficiency and should benefit greatly from playing next to a real veteran point guard in VanVleet.
However, I think Sengun stands to benefit more than just about anyone else from having a better facilitator on the floor with VanVleet. I’d expect those two’s minutes to be paired an awful lot, because having a point guard that can get him the ball on time and on his spots will only make him a more effective and efficient scorer, while also needing to be paired with a solid screen navigator on defense. Sengun has tremendous offensive upside both as a scorer and playmaker, and I’m fascinated to see how Udoka deploys him and tries to maximize his skillset this season. Playing on a team with a coherent identity should allow Sengun to show his full abilities on the offensive end. A year ago, Sengun was second on the Rockets with 3.9 assists per game, and I’d expect them to continue leaning on his playmaking abilities even more this season.
Part of what makes Sengun so important to this Rockets is they don’t really have anyone else capable of impacting the game the way he can on offense. Jock Landale is a very solid backup big man and will give Udoka an option for a solid rim protector off the bench, but is not anywhere close to as dynamic on offense as Sengun. While there are some overlapping talents elsewhere on the roster, they are banking heavily on Sengun at the center position right now. As such, if he stagnates this year, the Rockets will probably end up right around their win total projection of 30 or so wins and be a mid-lottery team. However, if he continues to grow and the structure around him improves to augment all the things he seemingly can do, that could unlock that higher level for Houston to allow them to start dreaming a bit earlier of a Play-In chase.
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