Category: News

Iggy Azalea went scorched-earth when The Athletic‘s Tashan Reed tweeted in October, “The combination of Allegiant Stadium trying to make BBQ and Iggy Azalea performing at halftime is gonna make me depressed.” After Azalea completed her performance at halftime between the Las Vegas Raiders and Houston Texans, she replied, “f you think you’re depressed now I’ll spare you the tears you’d cry knowing what my paycheck was to come and jiggle a lil ass.”

The humorous exchange might have been an appetizer for what Azalea has in store for us this Friday, January 13.

Earlier this week, Azalea was asked when she’s planning on dropping new music. “Music?… summer,” she tweeted back. “Scandalous sh*t?… Friday.”

We haven’t heard from Azalea since 2021’s aptly titled album The End Of An Era, which she implied at the time would be her final musical output. However, last August, she changed her mind.

“A year ago I was willing to walk away from music because I was tired of the negative energy it attracted,” Azalea tweeted on August 8, 2022. “But what I’ve learned is that even when I’m minding my business, y’all gonna be negative AND nosey. So if I can’t have peace, neither can you. I’m coming back. Cry about it.”

More recently, Azalea opened on Pitbull’s Can’t Stop Me Now Tour and reportedly sold her master recordings and publishing catalog for “an eight-figure sum.”

Things aren’t so rosy between Donald Trump and Mike Pence, his one-term vice president. That’s what happens when you reportedly suggest that “maybe” your running mate should have been hanged during the attack on the Capitol. Trump is doing it all over again in 2024, but he won’t have Pence to release angry, stream-of-consciousness statements about this time: all of the vice presidents he’s considering are women.

The Daily Beast reports that “Trumpworld has been bandying about the names of Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), along with a third contender who has already begun to rankle corners of Trumpworld: Tulsi Gabbard.” The Hawaii-born Gabbard endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 (after she failed to capture more than two percent of the vote in presidential polls), but she changed allegiances in October 2022, and now she’s filling in for Tucker Carlson on Fox News.

One GOP strategist compared Trump picking Gabbard to President Biden dumping Vice President Kamala Harris in favor of a unity ticket with former GOP Reps. Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger… Stefanik allies point to her loyalty to Trump through both impeachments, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and her endorsement of his 2024 campaign. They pointed out that she was the first to endorse Trump for 2024 among congressional GOP leadership.

“You have to think about how you win suburban women and how you win battleground districts,” a GOP operative told the Daily Beast about why Trump is only focused on women as his running mate so far. I’m hearing strong buzz about the brown M&M. She’s wearing glasses, so you know she’s smart.

Other veeps reportedly being considered include South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and Kari Lake, who claims she’s the “real” and “duly elected governor” of Arizona even though, uh, she isn’t. Trump/Lake 2024? Sounds like a match made in hell.

(Via the Daily Beast)

Memphis labelmates Moneybagg Yo and GloRilla team up to depict one toxic relationship in the new video for Moneybagg Yo’s new song “On Wat U On.” Remember when Kendrick Lamar and Taylour Paige made fans very uncomfortable with their back and forth on “We Cry Together?” Well, turn up the drama to 11, add some 808s, and pour in a strong shot of humor, and that’s the energy “On Wat U On” is giving.

The video takes everything to another level, casting the two CMG rappers as quarrelsome lovers as Glo finds a pack of condoms in the backseat of Yo’s car in the drive-thru (rookie mistake, Yo!). She turns up, he responds in kind, and the argument continues at home, escalating to its inevitable end: Property damage at the manicured hands of the ratchet renegade that’ll probably leave them both riding the bus for a while. The best part, though, is the drive-thru clerk’s face as they hash out their situationship rather than picking up their lunch.

The song is the latest example of GloRilla’s unassuming charm, which seems to pop out every time she does an interview. Meanwhile, pairing her with Moneybagg Yo shows that Yo Gotti has a great feel for coaching his growing roster, finding chemistry between his artists, and getting the best out of them. “On Wat U On” bodes well for the future of Collective Music Group.

Watch the video above.

The Coachella 2023 lineup was just revealed, and the headliners Frank Ocean, Bad Bunny, and Blackpink are a big deal. The latter two had massive 2022s with record-breaking No. 1 albums, whereas Ocean’s Coachella performance has been long-awaited since past cancellations.

However, it looks like someone else may have been supposed to play Coachella this year — the one and only Justin Bieber. Sources told TMZ that he was offered a headlining spot but turned it down to focus on working on his new album. They also told the site that he’s likely to headline Coachella in 2024.

The “Peaches” singer had a chaotic 2022. He postponed all of his Justice World Tour to this year. “After getting off stage, the exhaustion overtook me and I realized that I needed to make my health a priority right now. So I’m going to take a break from touring for the time being,” he explained in a statement.

In June, he revealed he was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome. “As you can see, this eye is not blinking,” he demonstrated in a video. “I can’t smile on this side of my face. This nostril will not move. So there’s full paralysis on the side of my face.”

For a brief moment, it looked like Colin Farrell’s The Penguin series for HBO Max was doomed to be a victim of the recent Warner Bros. Discovery merger. The studio was slashing projects left and right on a cost-cutting crusade, especially on the streaming side. However, things quickly took a turn when The Batman director Matt Reeves became the first filmmaker to sign a First Look deal with WBD. Now, The Penguin is not only safe, but according to a new interview with Reeves, it will be an essential building block for The Batman sequel.

Via Collider:

Reeves explains that “There’s actually a whole little fabric of things we’re wanting to do, the way we’re doing with [the] Penguin and how that comes back into how that will lead into the sequel, and what that sequel is going to be.” It sounds like the miniseries will set the foundations for The Batman sequel, which means that fans who want to fully understand Reeves’ BatVerse movies will have to watch all the spinoffs too.

This approach tracks with James Gunn‘s new tenure at DC Studios where he promised a more connected storytelling experience as WBD seeks to more closely follow the MCU’s template for a shared universe across TV and movies. But there’s an interesting caveat in the case of The Penguin. Both Gunn and Reeves have made it clear that the Robert Battinson-verse will remain separate from the DC Universe that Gunn is overseeing. There will still be more connected storytelling as Reeves builds out his own little Gotham universe, but as of this writing, Pattinson’s version of Batman won’t be gallivanting around with Superman or The Flash.

For now.

(Via Collider)

ASAP Rocky confirmed last month that Don’t Be Dumb, his highly anticipated forthcoming album, is finished. But when you’re around Rocky, don’t be tired. On Tuesday, January 10, Roc Nation’s Jay Brown learned that the hard way.

Per TMZ, Rocky and Rihanna were dining in Santa Monica after attending the 2023 Golden Globes, where Rihanna had been nominated in the Best Original Song, Motion Picture category for “Lift Me Up.”

“Rocky got the heads up Roc Nation exec Jay Brown was snoozing in the car,” TMZ relayed, “a magic moment for professional and amateur photogs like Rocky. Jay was out cold and at a point, Rocky decided enough was enough, so he waived off the cameras and knocked on the hood, which served as a wake-up call.”

During the Golden Globes, host Jerrod Carmichael made Rihanna the center of attention, which, let’s be real, she’s immediately the center of attention the moment she walks into any room. “Take all the time you want on that album, girl,” Carmichael said. “Don’t let these fools on the internet pressure you into nothing!”

In early November, in contrast to Rocky, Rihanna pumped the brakes on the assumption that her first album since 2016’s Anti would follow her Super Bowl LVII halftime performance.

“Super Bowl is one thing, new music is another thing, do you hear that, fans?” she told The Associated Press at the time.

With Super Bowl LVII exactly one month away, Rihanna is likely knee-deep in intense preparation. Not to mention, she and Rocky are busy parenting their infant son. She probably wishes she could take a page from Brown’s book and just sleep.

The Golden Globes went pretty swimmingly this year. No huge controversies emerged, so there will likely be some doomsday take on ratings soon enough, but overall, the broadcast went well. Host Jerrod Carmichael roasted the HFPA in a playful yet effective way, and we received plenty of Jennifer Coolidge and Colin Ferrell. As well, Carmichael took a savage swing at Scientology, and Eddie Murphy made a Will Smith joke that actually worked in 2023.

Oh, and Paul Walter Hauser won the category for Best Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture made for Television. He did so through the strength of his performance in Black Bird. Hauser portrayed suspected serial killer Larry Hall in the Apple TV+ limited series, and he beat out several strong category contenders, including F. Murray Abraham (The White Lotus), Domhnall Gleeson (The Patient), and Seth Rogen (Pam and Tommy).

Hauser’s win was a well deserved one, given that he’s a phenomenal character actor who I particularly enjoyed in I, Tonya, in which he played Jeff Gillooly’s “bodyguard,” Shawn Eckardt, to plenty of laughs. He also portrays Cobra Kai‘s Raymond/”Stingray,” who started out as a cartoonishly over enthused, older-than-his-dojo-mates buffoon. However, he became pivotal in Seasons 4 and 5, given how Terry Silver forced Stingray to help him frame John Kreese. This turned into a surprisingly intense and emotional arc, and Cobra Kai fans simply love the dude. They came together for Paul while led by Yuji Okumoto, who plays the great Chozen and offered congrats on Twitter.

Soon, the chorus of “Stingray!” began, as it rightfully should have done.

Black Bird is streaming on Apple TV+, and of course, Cobra Kai‘s (first) five seasons can be found on Netflix.

Last year, Nick Cave endured the tragic death of his son Jethro Lazenby who was only 31. He received widespread support from his fans, and found comfort in his music-making: “What I’m doing artistically is entirely repaying a debt,” he said in an interview.

Today, in a new post on The Red Hand Files, he confessed to working on a new album, which started alongside the beginning of 2023. “My plan for this year is to make a new record with the Bad Seeds,” Cave wrote. “This is both good news and bad news. Good news because who doesn’t want a new Bad Seeds record? Bad news because I’ve got to write the bloody thing.”

He continued, “I started the process at 9am on January 1st. It is now January 6th — nearly a week has passed and I’ve written a few things but they aren’t very good, or maybe they are, it’s difficult to tell.”

“Writing lyrics is the pits,” he added later in the post. “It’s like jumping for frogs, Fred. It’s the sh*ts. It’s the bogs. It actually hurts. It comes in spurts, but few and far between. There is something obscene about the whole affair. Like crimes that rhyme.”

Between her role in Glass Onion, new music on the way, and topless birthday party, Janelle Monáe is on top of the world right now. Another thing she’s on top of is managing her social media usage, thanks to self-imposed rules like staying off it while she’s ovulating.

Towards the end of her The Late Show interview last night (January 11), Stephen Colbert noted that Monáe recently shared an oft-cited David Bowie quote on social media: “If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

Colbert then asked Monáe if she leaves other notes for herself, so she pulled out her phone and went through a few. They included, “Do not go on social media during ovulation” (which was not explained further), “Just because you can say something, doesn’t mean you should say it,” and, “I have the power to say no.”

Watch Monáe’s Colbert interview above and below.

Reese Witherspoon was romantic-comedy royalty in the 2000s, starring in classics like Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama. Ashton Kutcher was also a fixture of the genre in Just Married, What Happens in Vegas, and No Strings Attached. Both actors have mostly stayed away from the tropes that were spoofed in They Came Together in recent years, but they’ll make their rom-com return in Netflix‘s Your Place or Mine.

Written and directed by Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-creator and The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses writer Aline Brosh McKenna, Your Place or Mine is about Debbie (Witherspoon) and Peter (Kutcher), “best friends and total opposites. She craves routine with her son in Los Angeles; he thrives on change in New York. When they swap houses and lives for a week they discover what they think they want might not be what they really need,” according to the official plot synopsis.

It’s not quite a peeing-in-the-fountain body swap, but it’s close.

Your Place or Mine, which also stars Zoë Chao, Tig Notaro, Griffin Matthews, Rachel Bloom, Shiri Appleby, Vella Lovell, and Steve Zahn, comes to Netflix on February 10. Make it a pre-Valentine’s Day double feature with Magic Mike’s Last Dance, the “Super Bowl of stripper movies,” which comes out the same day.