It feels pretty safe to say that having a car stolen is universally traumatic. The invaded privacy, potential loss of irreplaceable items (everything from expensive equipment to silly trinkets that might hold immense sentimental value), and financial strain are enough to be devastating for anyone. And for those whose livelihoods depend on their vehicle, this stress is exponentially greater. The fact that people choose to inflict this kind of damage upon others is enough to make one lose faith in the human race.
However, despite humanity’s potential to commit truly awful acts, it always holds an equal amount of potential to help each other in times of need.
For landscaper Andres Benitez, paying the bills and putting food on the table relied heavily on the family’s work truck, along with the tools used for their business inside. According to NBC Los Angeles, it was something that the Benitez family saved up for years to afford. Then, on Nov. 9, it was stolen and used in a chaotic two-hour police pursuit from Orange to L.A. County in California.
The car thief broke into the Benitez home, stole the keys, then sped away—driving the wrong way on narrow two-lane roads, running red lights and crashing into multiple cars. By the time the illegal driver was arrested, the family’s work truck was heavily damaged.
To make matters worse, even though the truck was insured, it was now considered evidence and would possibly not be returned for a very long time—if at all.
Benitez might have been initially heartbroken, but he would soon be surprised that in his darkest hour, he would be met with compassion. He shared in an Instagram post that within only an hour of the incident unfolding, people showed up with trucks and tools to share, and were even offering volunteer work.
Benitez would later set up a GoFundMe page, initially only to raise enough money to replace the lost landscaping tools. But as of Nov. 15, the page has raised more than $100,000, allowing the family to get a new truck and continue earning a living.
As Benitez shared in a subsequent Instagram post, the whole thing was a “tragedy turned into a blessing,” one he plans to pay forward by getting in touch with and helping another victim in the incident who similarly used his van for work.
The young landscaper might describe the episode as a “life changing experience,” but fortunately, in this case it’s an uplifting use of the term.
“[It’s] truly heartwarming and unbelievable… [it] puts a big smile on my face knowing there’s people out there who truly care about helping me and my family get back on our feet…it’s just insane and still feels very unreal. I really am truly thankful and appreciate every single one of you for helping us out,” he said.
While it’s true that car theft is a serious issue (and one that has increased at an alarming rate over the past couple of years) it’s still a comfort to know that no matter the statistic, the world is full of people willing to step in and help. When egregious acts are seemingly plentiful, it becomes crucial to look at what right things are happening.
If the name wasn’t already taken, the latest video from Lucky Daye’s upcoming Candydrip Deluxe would work well for a song called “Unholy.” In reality, it’s titled “F*ckin’ Sound” and the video makes fitting use of its gospel-inspired organs and vocals and salacious subject matter thanks to a sacrilegious setting and risque, borderline NSFW action between Daye and his female costar.
He starts the video in a confessional booth, admitting to the priest, “I have sinned — I’ve never done this before.” But although the priest asks “what troubles you?” Daye’s response is anything but troubled, as he laughs at the notion of what he’s gotten away with. The rest of the video is dedicated to detailing exactly what his transgressions were. Feel free to check that out above.
The deluxe version of Candydrip doesn’t have a release date yet, but the release of its first single is well-timed to take advantage of the increased attention he’s undoubtedly receiving as a result of his multiple Grammy Award nominations. In addition to being nominated for Best R&B Album for Candydrip alongside Recording Academy mainstays like PJ Morton, Robert Glasper, and Mary J. Blige, he’s also up for a Best R&B Performance award for its single “Over,” against Beyoncé, Jazmine Sullivan, Mary J., and Muni Long.
You can watch the “F*ckin’ Sound” video up top and pre-save the deluxe version of Candydrip here.
Growing up in the harsh streets of West Philadelphia, Armani White confronted the intersection of economic scarcity and personal pride. One particularly memorable day, White was riding home from elementary school on a bike his father bought him. And when an older bully tried to take it, a fight broke out. “The way I grew up, my dad was like, ‘I don’t care what went on outside, you are not coming in this house without your bike,’” the 26-year-old rapper says. “Philly has a very stark way of deciding if you’re going to be prey or the predator. I’ll tell you one thing: no matter how the fight went, I left with that bike.”
Now, phoning in from Colorado during an off-day from opening on Jessie Reyez’s Yessie Tour, White is reaping the hard-earned rewards of a survivor’s resolve — riding the high from “Billie Eilish,” his breakthrough, menacing earworm that landed him a record deal with Def Jam in July. “I learned I’m not gonna be the one that gets bullied. I’m not gonna be the one that falls victim to circumstances and surroundings,” he says.
White has always known that he was going to fight for rap stardom. He watched Will Smith on The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air and internalized that it was possible to represent Philly and make it out of West Philly. But his reality couldn’t be tidily presented on television.
First, White lost his uncle to gun violence. Then in 2016, he drove by his father’s house to try and mend their on-and-off relationship, only to see an emaciated man entrenched in a battle with prostate cancer. He sped off before his father spotted him, performed for the first time at The Fillmore that night, and then sat by his dad’s bedside for the next three months until his untimely passing. He has suffered through two house fires, in 2006 and 2020, that inspired his 2021 EP Things We Lost In The Fire. (Four of White’s family members died in the 2006 fire.) For White and all of Philly’s own, the city doubles as a hometown and a crash course in resilience.
“A lot of us in Philadelphia, when you just talk to someone and feel like there’s a lot of trauma, a lot of pain, there’s just a lot of layers to the city that we’ve all kind of gone through,” White says. “And if we haven’t gone through it, trauma is passed down. We found ways to make our trauma sound, feel and look beautiful. But at the end of the day, it’s still trauma.”
Beginning in fifth grade, using his first cellphone as his microphone until his mother bought him one in 10th grade, White has channeled his trauma into making what he calls “happy hood music.” It honors who Philadelphia made him through biting anecdotal lyricism. It was his way of musically redirecting before he physically could. Now, his sound is ubiquitously embraced, with “Billie Eilish” featured in TikToks by Kim Kardashian, LeBron James, Tom Brady, Odell Beckham Jr., Gabrielle Union-Wade, Paris Hilton, and more. But he’s been meticulously marinating that sound in Philly for the past decade.
In 2011, White began paying $50 an hour to record at Philadelphia’s famed (and since-closed) Batcave Studios, where city legends such as Meek Mill and Gillie Da Kid walked the halls. White recorded “Stick Up” there, his seminal 2015 single chronicling the crime on his block in head-spinning fashion that gave his career an initial spark. That day, he was “loopy” after having his wisdom teeth taken out and skipped class at Delaware State to drive to Batcave. White’s unassuming charm sticking out at the studio wasn’t an isolated incident.
“It’s cool because I’m one of the last shining stars from the Batcave era. Back then, I was just the weird kid,” he says. “Everybody was making songs about shooting each other, and I was making boom bap. It built a lot of character because I had to be the one person to champion my songs when I was in a building where everybody was like, ‘Alright, that’s kinda weird.’”
And then, a snowstorm in 2012. White had come to the studio that night with $150, enough for two or three hours of recording time, and then the weather prevented anyone from leaving. It turned into a nightlong session with engineer Don Groove. “That was the night that turned [our relationship] into, Oh, this guy really believes in me as an artist; he’s not just taking my little allowance money and pocketing it,” White says.
Groove later opened his own studio on the other side of town, Groove House, where he and White made “Billie Eilish.” White describes the environment at Groove House as family-oriented and his relationship with Groove and his other day-ones as safe. He needed that comfortability — that unspoken permission to be himself and lean into his offbeat instincts — to ambitiously sample NORE’s 2002 hit “Nothin,’” persistently pursue the clearance of that sample and the usage of Eilish’s name, and pen a life-changing hook: “B*tch, I’m stylish / Glock tucked, big t-shirt, Billie Eilish.”
The song became White’s first-ever entry on the Billboard Hot 100 in September, peaking at No. 58, and is platinum-certified in Canada. White had reached plenty of impressive milestones before “Billie Eilish,” though. Years ago at The Roots Picnic, White nervously approached Black Thought and clumsily tried to introduce himself. “I know who you are,” Black Thought interrupted — validation that White kept in his back pocket to wade through murkier stretches. White’s return to music after his father’s 2016 death was marked at the 2018 Made In America Festival, held annually in Philadelphia, and by a one-off show for 10,000 people at Colorado’s iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre. And in 2019, he opened on Vince Staples’ 2019 Smile, You’re On Camera Tour. Last year, his Things We Lost In The Fire track “Danny Mac” was played on Power 99’s DJ Cosmic Kev.
But life is just different now.
“Billie Eilish” gets regular airplay in Philadelphia, and White’s older sister calls him every time she hears it on the radio. In 2006, White bought DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz Dedication 2 at the local mixtape stand on 52nd street and fanboyed over “SportsCenter”; at this year’s BET Awards, Drama praised White’s freestyle over Jack Harlow’s “First Class” beat and struck up a friendship. White’s 2022 Made In America set was anchored by “Billie Eilish,” crowdsurfing on a hot-air mattress and soaking in his city singing his song.
The first time White and I ever spoke, he called me from a Wendy’s in West Philly. It was a typical day for him. He had promised to take his mother to work, delaying a scheduled trip to New York City. Fast forward four years, Armani White can’t have nondescript days in West Philadelphia anymore.
“This one weekend in March, when [‘Billie Eilish’] first happened, I went to the grocery store down around the corner. Some guy had noticed me,” White says. “I used to ride my one-wheel up and down the city, and when I was riding it, people were yelling out, ‘Yo, Armani!’ I was going to get food, so when I get to the food spot, somebody swung they car, pulled it over, jumped out. He was like, ‘Yo, glock tucked, big t-shirt?’”
White eventually felt a little too noticeable in his neighborhood — “it’s not that many people walking around with a scarf and beads” — and didn’t like people knowing where he lived, the all-too-familiar feeling of having to look over his shoulder. He’d outgrown his city. It was time to move.
“Made it out the hood, now I’m just visiting my mama,” White sings in his August single “Diamond Dallas.” The song’s video was shot on his childhood 52nd Street block. In it, he surprises his mom with a tin bucket filled with $100,000. They ride through his old stomping grounds, experiencing their old reality from an elevated perspective. Will Smith planted the seed, but DJ Drama cemented for White that leaving Philly was necessary.
“That was a big thing that I had to understand that’s really, really hard to drill into somebody from Philly. ‘Yo, you should leave Philly,’ it’s like a foreign language,” White says. “When me and Drama talked, Drama was one of them examples of, ‘Yo, look, I left and I made it work, and who knows where I would be if I didn’t?’ It’s not that the best way is to leave. It’s just, sometimes, you gotta bring trophies home.”
White isn’t sure where he’ll settle down next, living in a sprinter van and enjoying the rockstar touring lifestyle for now, but he’ll carry Philadelphia with him wherever he goes. His entire band is from back home, and he doesn’t plan on recording anywhere else. He’s as tapped into Philadelphia music as ever, beaming at the opportunity to solidify “happy hood music” as the city’s identifying sound. He’d love to earn co-signs from Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert, and Jazmine Sullivan. Just as he did with his bike decades ago, he’s claiming what’s his: a boundless runway to become a Philadelphia artist worth idolizing.
“This is the first time in my life I’ve ever been the big homie,” White says. “I’m the person who gives the advice. I talk to literally anybody from Philly. My effort is never going to diminish or dismiss where I came from. It’s always going to be like, How can I give back and how can I amplify where I came from? Because the bigger platform that the city has, the bigger it is going to be when I stand on it.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Fans of the late Notorious B.I.G. (more commonly referred to as Biggie Smalls) are in for a treat. The rapper’s estate and Meta (the Facebook parent company) are coming together to honor his musical legacy with a virtual concert experience.
Sky’s The Limit: A VR Concert Experience, named after his 1997 song with R&B group 112, will feature a realistic avatar of the Brooklyn native performing several of his classic hip-hop records across his albums, Ready To Die and Life After Death. The VR experience hosted in Meta Horizon Worlds‘ “The Brook” will also take viewers on a guided tour of his childhood neighborhood.
The rapper was tragically killed 25 years ago, at the tender age of 24. As his mother Voletta Wallace’s only child, this rendering could reopen a deep wound for her, but she assured she is fully on board with the concert.
In a statement, Wallace shared, “Having the ability to create a variance of a new opportunity to showcase my son Christopher’s music through the advancement of technology is hard for me to grasp at times. However, I’ve found so much excitement in the process of developing his avatar and understanding the value added for fans to experience him in ways unattainable until now.
Wallace added, “Thank you to all who have contributed to bringing this project to fruition.”
Neither lifelong collaborator Diddy nor ex-wife Faith Evans (mother to his son C. J. Wallace) have issued a comment.
The Notorious B.I.G. Sky’s The Limit: A VR Concert Experience is set to premiere on December 16. To reserve access, click here.
Steve Harvey has absolutely made Family Feud his own in recent years. The long-running game show has had a lot of hosts over its run, but few have been able to take control of a show and create it in his own image like the comedian.
A mainstay of his time hosting the show has been, of course, his own reactions to the suggestive answers many contestants give to prompts. It’s a design feature, not a flaw, but Harvey is great at absorbing the weird energy of nervous contestants being slightly horny and making it a laugh-out-loud moment.
On Tuesday, the show’s Twitter account posted a classic clip from the show that basically ground the entire taping to a halt. You can see the full video above, as the moment came in the Fast Money round and therefore has a bit of context to it.
In the clip, contestant Secily is looking for a big round after Tanya only got 23 of the 200 matches needed to win the big money.
“Name a part of your body that’s bigger now than it was when you were 16,” Harvey asked. The first contestant answered “chest,” which didn’t get many answers because it’s more than likely the “stomach” got bigger for folks in middle age. But Secily went way off the board and into a much more interesting space, anatomy-wise.
“Penis,” she said.
Immediately, the crowd laughed. And keep in mind, this is a timed exercise with the clock ticking and just 30 seconds to get five responses on the board in time. But none of that mattered after Secily said “penis” because the crowd couldn’t focus, and Steve Harvey basically forgot to do his job.
YouTube
The clock kept ticking, and Harvey slumped to the floor contemplating what she said. The game actually had to come to a screeching halt because, well, no one was doing anything they were supposed to be doing. Harvey stopped asking questions, Secily couldn’t give answers and the crowd continued to hoot and holler.
Eventually, things got back on track after some big reactions from Harvey. It’s worth a full watch, as Harvey noted how aggressively she shouted her answer and even gave her a chance to change it when things got reset. It’s an old clip one, for sure, but it’s also an instant classic. And the fact that it got so much attention more than a decade later shows just how funny it was all these years later.
After 11 seasons, the AMC zombie series is ending — except for the spinoffs, which are just beginning. It’s a tough task for showrunner Angela Kang, who has to balance making the episode feel like a satisfying finale, while also setting up future stories for characters we know don’t die. Another issue: The Walking Dead has so many freaking characters that some fan favorites are going to draw the short end of the proverbial straw.
“What I’ll say is that this is the approach that we took, and it’s possible that not everybody’s going to be satisfied with this, but when you do have that many characters, you cannot give every person equal weight in something that is basically, I don’t know, 60 minutes of screen time. You’re just gonna have a nothing burger story,” Kang told Entertainment Weekly. The finale is “definitely focused more on some particular stories,” she added. “It’s not going to be every single person gets equal screen time, because like I said, it just makes it impossible to wrangle.”
This is why the final episode should be focused on just one character. Sorry, Daryl, Carol, Maggie, Michonne (is she still on the show?), Gabriel, and Negan. It’s Jerry time.
Despite the lack of a red wave, which is currently being pinned on Donald Trump, the Republicans still have a chance of eking out a very, very small majority in the House of Representatives. More specifically, Kevin McCarthy held off a challenger to being named Speaker of the House, and apparently that decision has opened the door for Marjorie Taylor Greene to just start naming herself to committees.
It’s a surprising turnaround considering Greene was stripped of her House committees in February 2021 for endlessly spewing outlandish conspiracy theories. However, in a surprisingly cunning move, her newfound allegiance to McCarthy is apparently paying dividends. Here’s what she recently told Charlie Kirk about her future if Republicans control the House. Via Mediaite:
“I’m very excited to serve on Oversight. That’s the committee I’ve asked for and no one has told me no about anything. I am going to be pursuing many things and I’m thrilled to be able to do that.”
It should be noted that Greene is operating under the assumption that McCarthy will follow through on naming her to the Oversight Committee, which has not officially happened yet. Back in October, it was reported that McCarthy is being “held hostage” by Greene and other fringe House members like Paul Gosar who are demanding considerable more power in the GOP majority. On top of being named to Oversight, Greene reportedly also wants a seat on the House Judicial Committee, which would be bonkers and yet, frighteningly, not out of the question in the new House alignment.
Take Walker’s latest rally for instance. The former NFL player spent over two minutes rambling off the plot of an 80s horror film in an effort to sway voters to his side. According to his speech, Walker stayed up into the early hours of the morning watching Tom Holland’s original version of Fright Night, a movie about a kid who recruits a TV show host to play vampire hunter when his next-door neighbor turns out to be one of the undead. All judgment of Walker’s choice to skip the Colin Farrell remake aside, Walker initially used the film to garner some laughs from the crowd before changing course and using his time at the podium to give everyone a confusing recap of the movie that had absolutely nothing to do with his campaign talking points.
Enjoy the visceral awkwardness that ensues below:
“I don’t know if you know, vampires are cool people, are they not?” — Herschel Walker’s speeches are somehow even less coherent than his TV appearances. Like, what it this. pic.twitter.com/nl0UmtKa26
But wait, that wasn’t the only weird AF speech Walker forced his Georgia constituents to listen to this week. In what appears to be a totally different rally held by the congressional hopeful, Walker slams the Green Party’s agenda, using Russian tanks and the factually incorrect belief that America’s doing “the best thing we can” by continuing to use “gas-guzzling” cars to defend his climate change denial stance.
In a fun game we often like to play when it comes to this guy, let’s play a round of “See If You Can Make Sense Of What Republican Senate Candidate Herschel Walker Is Saying Here.”
Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R): “If we was ready for the green agenda, I’d raise my hand right now. But we’re not ready right now … What we need to do is keep having those gas-guzzling cars, ’cause we got the good emissions under those cars.” pic.twitter.com/KwEIEpdg8C
In all seriousness, if Walker’s SNL-worthy run for Congress doesn’t convince everyone that they too can become a politician, we don’t know what will. The bar is just so low, folks.
Working from home has its perks. Kurt Vile created his recent album, Watch My Moves, at his new OKV Central home studio in Philadelphia. And now for his latest holiday cover of Bob Dylan’s “Must Be Santa,” Vile figured he might as well get his two daughters in the mix to sing back up vocals. Heck, they’re around, right?
Vile and his two little Viles sing over warm synths, flipping Dylan’s raucous, accordion-studded 2009 take on the Christmas staple on its head.
“I thought I’d do an acoustic version and have my daughters sing backup,” Vile said in a statement. “But then it turned into more of a weird synth version with their vocals, which is really the hook.”
The song is part of the Spotify Holiday Singles collection and it must have felt feel pretty rewarding for the Vile family to take on a Bob Dylan tune together. Even more so that Bob Dylan gave it his blessing. Vile shared a story about making the song:
“When I was asked to be on this Christmas compilation, they said ‘you can do any Christmas song you want, as long as it’s not repeated by somebody else on this series.’ I thought it was nice of them to invite me, but I didn’t know if I could pull off a Christmas song! Then my mind jumped to when John Agnello showed me the Bob Dylan version of ‘Must Be Santa’ while we were making the Smoke Ring For My Halo record. It’s a really hilarious video (he showed me that first), and it shows a rambunctious Christmas party. Bob Dylan has a wig on, and someone goes flying through a window. All this time, I thought it was Bob Dylan’s song. It’s really catchy, and he makes it his own as he usually does. I figured if I can do Dylan’s ‘Must Be Santa,’ if that’s not taken, it’s a sign. I gotta be the next chapter in this version of a Bob Dylan song. Then I realized it was actually a classic Christmas song, and was written however long ago, but I still wanted to do it justice the way Bob did. I wanted to be the guy who attempted to pull it off.
This was also a great excuse to use my home studio OKV Central again, with my bandmate Adam Langellotti on bass, and Ted Young. Ted moved to Philly (he engineers with me a lot), but he was actually John Agnello’s assistant engineer back when I first heard Bob Dylan’s ‘Must Be Santa.’ It feels like a perfect circle, really. I thought I’d do an acoustic version and have my daughters sing backup, but then it turned into more of a weird synth version with their vocals, which is really the hook. I figured Bob wouldn’t hear it, but I still wanted to do it justice, and once I got my daughters singing with me I hoped he would at least like it. Now I know… he loves it [laughs]. Merry Christmas, Bob Dylan!”
Listen to Kurt Vile and his daughters cover “Must Be Santa” from the Spotify’s Holiday Singles Collection below.
SZA‘s long-anticipated sophomore album is finally on the horizon. In a recent interview with Billboard, SZA revealed that the album is titled S.O.S. and is currently planned to arrive sometime next month. The album marks her first in five years, following her 2017 debut, Ctrl.
Though she did not disclose an exact date, fans have already taken to Twitter to share their theories.
One fan on Twitter says he believes the album will arrive just before Christmas Day.
“The clock in the final minute of the “Shirt” video shows the time 12:21,” they said. “the license plate in the beginning says “NO CTRL, DEC 2022″. Argue in the comments.”
I HAVE A THEORY!! I think SZA’s album will come out on DECEMBER 21ST THIS YEAR!!! The clock in the final minute of the “Shirt” video shows the time 12:21. the license plate in the beginning says “NO CTRL, DEC 2022”. Argue in the comments. @sza@THESZAROOM@szaonchartspic.twitter.com/FymlcPzGev
If SZA continues the pattern she established in 2020, a Christmas-time release date for S.O.S. shouldn’t be too far off. She surprised us on Christmas Day of 2020 by releasing her single, “Good Days.” In 2021, she dropped “I Hate U” on streaming platforms just weeks before Christmas. She has not confirmed if either of those songs, along with the Ty Dolla Sign-assisted “Hit Different,” which she released in September of 2020, will appear on S.O.S..
On December 3, SZA will perform on Saturday Night Live in an episode hosted by Keke Palmer. Ahead of the performance, she unveiled a teaser clip for a new song called “PSA.”
As for collaborators, SZA has kept rather mum, however, she revealed that she and producer Rodney Jerkins cut seven tracks in one day during the S.O.S. sessions in a recent interview with Complex.
“That was always my dream,” she said. “To work with [Jerkins] based on his work with Brandy and Amerie.”
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