Category: News

Only eight years ago, Brandon Fried found himself stepping into the shoes of former The Neighbourhood drummer Bryan Sammis after he departed in 2014 to pursue a solo career. The move seemed to work perfectly, but after allegations surfaced on Monday about Fried groping María Zardoya, frontwoman of the band the Marías, he was promptly given the boot.

Zardoya shared her experience via Instagram yesterday (November 13), writing, “i was at a bar last night, and i was groped under the table by brandon fried @brandonfried_, the drummer of the neighbourhood. it was one of the most uncomfortable things i’ve ever experienced. i felt an invasion of my space, privacy and body. @thenbhd ya’ll need a new drummer, this guy is a complete creep.”

After sharing her harrowing account, the “Sweater Weather” band quickly responded on their social media, making it clear they had “zero tolerance” for inappropriate behavior towards women.

The drummer didn’t deny the allegation and offered his own response to the recent incident: “I am so terribly sorry to Maria. My actions were inexcusable and intolerable. They are not reflective of who l am as a person, but clearly a reflection of who I become while under the influence,” he wrote in a now-deleted Instagram story post. “I want to apologize to women who have been victims of any behavior that has left them feeling uncomfortable or violated. I am also sorry to The Neighbourhood and our fans for letting them down.”

The Neighbourhood had been relatively quiet on social media before the recent controversy. This past February, the band revealed they would be going on hiatus.

This comes after the lead singer — and rumored beau of Billie Eilish — Jesse Rutherford posted snippets of what appears to be new music on his TikTok account around the same time the band announced they would be taking a break, Variety reports.

The Saturday Night Live to commercial spokesperson pipeline is very real, as evidenced by the latest handful of commercials that have been making the rounds as of late. Of course, SNL‘s (former) golden child Pete Davidson had to get in on the marketing plan and sell some manscaping kits in a new ad.

While that sounds like any old weekend for Davidson, he’s actually promoting Manscaped, a grooming company that hired Davidson as a spokesperson over the summer, when he was newly unemployed and single. It was a rough year for him, but things are looking up!

In his new holiday ad, Davidson and his mom are seen celebrating Christmas morning, though his personal groomer seemed to have been stolen by Santa Claus himself, who leaves a disgusting trail of hair to the fireplace. Does this sound like a scrubbed SNL bit? Yeah! Are we also sick of talking about Davidson and his various bodily achievements? Also yes, but it is what it is.

Last month, Taylor Swift did something unprecedented: On the Billboard Hot 100 chart following the release of Midnights, every song in the top 10 spots was by Swift, a feat that no other artist had ever done before. Meanwhile, Drake and 21 Savage just had a massive album of their own, Her Loss, drop recently. With all the buzz around it, it looked like it had a shot of actually repeating Swift’s feat.

Now, though, the top 10 spots of the Hot 100 chart dated November 19 have been revealed, and Drake and 21 managed to get only eight of the top 10 songs. Songs from Her Loss occupy spots No. 2 through No. 9, with “Rich Flex” coming in at No. 2. Those tracks are sandwiched by Swift’s “Anti-Hero,” which stays at No. 1 for a third week, and Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ former chart-topper “Unholy” at No. 10.

This comes a little over a year after Drake occupied nine of the top 10 spots on the Hot 100 back in September 2021. So, Drake it now the only artist to simultaneously have at least eight top-10 songs on the chart on two different occasions. With the latest chart, Drake now has a total of 67 career top-10 songs, which extends his record for the most of all time.

So, while Drake didn’t get No. 1 this week, he still had one of the best frames in Hot 100 chart history. Also, he and 21 Savage did just knock Midnights off the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

The trailer for Netflix’s hit series Sky Rojo was released today (November 14). In the upcoming third and final season, Argentine pop star Lali is joined by Puerto Rican superstar Rauw Alejandro, who is a new addition to the cast.

The first season of Sky Rojo was released on Netflix in March 2021. A second season followed in later that year on July 23. The show was created by Álex Pina, who was the director and producer for hit series Money Heist. Sky Rojo follows three women who are escaping prostitution and on the run from their pimp. Lali plays the character of Wendy.

The third season of Sky Rojo will be released on January 13, 2023. In the trailer, Lali and her co-stars Verónica Sánchez and Yany Prado are shown fighting back against the people that once held them captive. Alejandro is also appears to get in on the gun-wielding action. It’s not yet known what character he plays in the series.

On Twitter, Alejandro reposted the trailer for Sky Rojo with three freezing emojis. On Friday, he released his new album Saturno. That same day, Lali released the music video for her new dance track “Motiveishon.” The song follows her string of single releases this year that includes “Diva” and “Disciplina.”

The entire first 20 minutes or so of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is an extended tribute to Chadwick Boseman, beginning with a montage in the middle of the credits. Fair enough; the lead actor dying is sort of the elephant in the room here. It was nice that they didn’t recast it with a look-alike and just move on like it didn’t happen. Instead they gave us something surprisingly tasteful and undeniably affecting.

I knew Boseman hadn’t been replaced going in, but I was still curious to see how Marvel would balance the kind of typically tasteless expanded universe-pimping that usually bloats its films with a somber tribute to a beloved actor. Would Clark Gregg show up in a black SUV in the middle of funeral talking into an earpiece about some nonsense tie-in to Marvel TV show I didn’t watch? Thankfully, no.

For the most part, Wakanda Forever is one of the most tasteful movies Marvel has ever released. Partly because it avoids the obvious, most sacrilegious pitfalls, but also because of the exuberant production design. It’s full of visually impressive scenes that never feel utilitarian and that look better than just about anything Marvel has done before. Yet for as beautiful as it looked, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the story wasn’t worth an entire movie. The central conflict feels like something that could be resolved with one conversation, and eventually (after about two hours of screen time), it is. Wakanda Forever certainly isn’t crass but it’s not exactly a triumph, never quite doing justice to all the brilliant production design and inspired acting (Winston Duke, Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong’o — they’re all killing it).

The story takes place in the aftermath of the death of T’Challa (Bosman) who was not only a man, but the Black Panther, champion of Wakanda. T’Challa’s mother, Ramonda (Angela Bassett) is ruling Wakanda now, but she has yet to crown a new Black Panther. Since Wakanda is the Earth’s only known source of the magic metal Vibranium, the lack of a champion is making them appear weaker, and the world’s other nations, like the US and France for some reason, can barely keep their holsters in their pants over it. (I imagine picking on France is an easy sell to investors, and so France gets to be the only other acknowledged example of a colonial power here).

Queen Ramonda gives the other superpowers a verbal stiff arm at the UN, and so they go off searching for alternate sources of Vibranium. Just when it seems like the Americans have found it underneath the ocean, their CIA/Navy SEAL mining vessel gets attacked by some underwater blue dudes, who not only seem to possess Aquaman-like capabilities (which can’t be acknowledged as such without copyright infringement), but also the power of mind control. The sailors dive off the decks of their ships like lemmings, apparently to save them from getting their asses kicked anyway by an obviously technologically superior force.

The blue dudes turn out to be the Talokan, a previously unknown civilization of indigenous pre-Columbian Mesoamericans (think Aztec/Mayan styling) who also have Vibranium. Basically the underwater Wakanda. The leader of the Talokan turns out to be Namor, played by Tenoch Huerta, who’s really having fun with it in another notably great performance. Namor, who has even more powers than the rank-and-file Talokanians for reasons both asinine and too complicated to explain, reveals himself to Ramonda and T’Challa’s scientist sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), simultaneously proposing an alliance and demanding that the Wakandans deliver to him the scientist responsible for creating the Vibranium-detecting machine.

That scientist isn’t actually a Wakandan, but a precocious MIT student named Riri (Dominique Thorn), whom the Wakandans soon discover and take back to Wakanda (she’s forced into the annoying “superhero fanboy” role these movies always seem to require these days). This is the entire source of the conflict between the kingdoms of Wakanda and Talokan, a conflict that takes up the bulk of this nearly three-hour movie: Talokan is angry at having been exposed to the Earth colonizers and blames Wakanda for it. Martin Freeman (Everett K. Ross) and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss (Valentina Fontaine) are the respective good cop/bad cop figures of the CIA who get mixed up in there; not quite as out of place and sitcommy as Clark Gregg has been in past Marvel movies, but certainly in the same vein.

The Talokanians are a lot of fun, and Namor (who can fly with shoes made of flying fish!) makes for a solid Killmonger 2.0. And yet it seems obvious that this uncolonized Magic Africa and the underwater Magic Mesoamerica are destined to become allies. The movie sort of flails at excuses for why these two nations need to fight, and the fight scenes themselves are visually exciting and much more compelling to look at than anything Marvel has done in at least five or six movies, but they never quite make us forget the obvious. These guys should probably just team up already, why aren’t they teaming up??

To some extent, Wakanda Forever just does a much more visually appealing version of what Black Adam did: present an obvious conflict between superpowered indigenous peoples and predatorial colonizers, and then spend almost an entire movie doing wilder and wilder mental gymnastics to justify why the big baddy is someone else. Black Adam goes to hell to fight Sabbac, the Wakandans go underwater to fight Namor. At least Black Panther and the X-Men gave us a compelling Martin vs. Malcolm dynamic (reductive and somewhat unfair to the actual Malcolm but at least compelling), Wakanda Forever and Black Adam just feel like they’re avoiding the obvious.

What is stopping these movies from making the actual CIA and the military-industrial complex the actual villain? (I mean I could speculate here, but I’ll keep the question rhetorical in the context of an arts review). This is precisely the kind of conflict superhero narratives have traditionally been great at exploring (see: The Boys, Watchmen) so seeing them delay it feels at best like an unsatisfying sacrifice to an episodic structure, and at worst like conceptual cowardice.

Either they’re afraid of having Americans be the villains or they’re saving it for later and wasting our time with a three-hour movie that merely postpones it. Wakanda Forever does a great job memorializing Chadwick Boseman but a poor job justifying its own existence as a narrative.

‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ is in theaters now. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.

More tributes to Takeoff have continued to appear online from the late Atlanta rapper’s friends and collaborators, even two weeks after his death. After his funeral was held at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta Friday (November 11), Cardi B and Quavo both posted touching eulogies on Instagram fondly remembering him. Today, another longtime collaborator who saw Takeoff as family since their connected careers took off in parallel to each other posted his own thoughts.

Murda Beatz, the Canadian producer who crafted beats for Migos early on in their rise to stardom and remained one of their most prolific partnerships, paid his respects to Takeoff with a lengthy post, saying, “Without Takeoff, There Would Be No Murda Beatz.”

“I Met You Almost 10 Years Ago, You And The Gang Always Made Me Feel Like I Was Their Blood Brother Since We Met,” he wrote. “Your Family, Your Momma, Your Brother Lingo, Your Uncle Quavo, Your Grandma, Everybody Treated Me Like I Was Part Of The Family. You And The Gang Really Adopted Me And Put Me Under Your Wing. I Stood Beside Yall And I Was Lucky Enough To Watch You Become One Of The Best Rappers Of Our Generation. My Brother Helped Push Trap Music To The Global Stage. We Took Mixtape Rap To The Top Of The Charts And Made It Mainstream. I’m So Proud To Call You My Brother And I’m So Grateful That I Met You Along This Journey Called Life. We Are The Same Age And It Breaks My Heart We Cant Grow Old Together Like We All Supposed To. Ima Miss You Bro This Shit Never Gonna Stop The Gang Gonna Keep Going Hard For You Bro I Promise On My Soul I’m Sorry This Happened To You Sending All My Love To You, Your Family And The Gang 4L.”

You can see Murda Beatz’s tribute to Takeoff below.

Murda Beatz is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

While we await the recently confirmed new music from The xx, its individual members aren’t wasting any time with their solo endeavors. Following Oliver Sim’s Hideous Bastard album released earlier this year and Jamie xx’s latest single “Kill Dem,” singer Romy Madley Croft has just put out her second ever solo track. Romy’s “Strong” is a collaboration with surging producer Fred Again.., which she calls,”emotional music to dance to” and it serves as their ode to the club as a place of healing and community.

“Strong” is the third collaboration between Romy and Fred Again.. following his track “Lights Out” and her 2020 debut single, “Lifetime,” but this one hits with a different palpable force. Inspired by Ibiza house and trance, Romy’s vocals soar in familiar fashion, but they’re paired with beats that have that finger-on-the-pulse feeling of Fred Again..’s world-smashing electronica. Romy sings about overcoming grief and it feels triumphant set to Fred’s production.

If there’s a symbiotic nature to “Strong,” that pierces through, it’s because Romy says she feels exactly that in working with Fred Again.. “My friendship with Fred means a lot to me, our closeness helps me to feel safe to be honest and vulnerable lyrically and we definitely connect over our love of songwriting and emotions in dance music,” she said in a statement. “It’s amazing and inspiring seeing and hearing what Fred is doing in his solo work and I’m very excited to be releasing this song together.”

The video for “Strong” was directed by Romy’s wife, filmmaker and photographer Vic Lentaigne. Watch and listen above.

As Sylvester Stallone continues to make the interview rounds to promote his new series, Tulsa King, the iconic action star has been getting candid about the days when he and Arnold Schwarzenegger would go toe-to-toe at the box office. While the two are close pals now, Stallone recently admitted that the musclebound stars genuinely hated each other during the height of their careers.

“We couldn’t stand to be in the same galaxy together for a while. We truly, truly loathed each other,” Stallone recently revealed to Insider while expanding on the anecdote about how Schwarzenegger tricked him into starring in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

The Rocky star took things even further while talking to Forbes about the fierce competitiveness between the two that ultimately led to a friendship built on being Hollywood titans:

“We really disliked each other immensely because we were… this may sound a little vain, but I think we were pioneering a kind of genre at that time and it hasn’t been seen since really,” Stallone told me via Zoom Thursday while promoting his new series Tulsa King, which premieres on Paramount+ Sunday. “So the competition, because it’s his nature, he is very competitive and so am I… and I just thought it actually helped, but off-screen we were still competitive and that was not a healthy thing at all, but we’ve become really good friends.”

After spending two decades hating each other, you’re now more likely to see Stallone and Schwarzenegger showing up to each other’s red carpet premieres and exchanging hugs that would crush mere mortals. It’s like a thunderclap from the Gods when they slap each other’s backs. Good for them.

(Via Insider, Forbes)

Rihanna has been busy generating headlines this fall — confirming she will perform the Super Bowl LVII halftime show, contributing two ballads to the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack, and controversially selecting Johnny Depp to appear in her Savage X Fenty Vol. 4 show. But Rihanna is constantly resetting the bar, and she hit the headline jackpot by merely mentioning Beyoncé today (November 14).

The Fenty mogul was asked by E! News to name her “dream model” for a future Savage X Fenty show. “Beyoncé,” Rihanna said. “I mean, Beyoncé’s got body. That would just trump everything for me.”

Savage X Fenty Vol. 4 premiered on Amazon Prime Video last Wednesday (November 9). The featured models included Abbott Elementary‘s Sheryl Lee Ralph, Wakanda Forever‘s Winston Duke, Cara Delevingne, Lilly Singh, Simu Liu, Taraji P. Henson, Taylour Paige, and more. There’s an even more ambitious goal amongst Rihanna’s team than getting Beyoncé for a future installment.

“It would not surprise me if we had Vol. 7 on the moon,” director Adam Blackstone said, per Billboard. “If anyone can do it, it’s our Rihanna.”

Fans will likely take Rihanna’s mention of Beyoncé and run with it. (And who could blame them?) In the same vein, the natural assumption was that Rihanna’s Super Bowl announcement and return to music meant that her first album since 2016’s ANTI was on the way. Not so fast.

“Super Bowl is one thing. New music is another thing. Do you hear that, fans?” Rihanna recently joked to the Associated Press.

The best defense mechanism is to just stream “Lift Me Up” and “Born Again” until Rihanna’s next official move.

Nearly six months ago, word circulated that Vladimir Putin’s inner circle was maneuvering to find a successor amid concerns over his Ukraine war. Those concerns, if true, apparently fell by the wayside, and perhaps that can be best explained by the fact that Putin punishes any Russian who dares to speak against him. A few months ago, local Russian lawmakers were summoned by police, fined, and removed from office after they plotted to overthrow the president for damaging the Russian economy with his current military invasion. Perhaps that’s also why we’re seeing some apparent backtracking after a key Putin ally allegedly called for the autocrat to be ousted.

As the New York Times relays, Aleksandr Dugin (whose own daughter perished earlier this year in a car bombing) now sees this war as an embarrassment. Newsweek points out that Dugin’s unofficial position as “Putin’s brain” makes this criticism notable, and here’s how the NYT sums up Dugin’s Telegram-posted apparent reference to Putin and his subsequent denial:

The post did not name Mr. Putin directly, but made reference to a study of myths and religions that included the African tale of Kings of the Rain, slain for failing to make it rain amid a drought. Mr. Dugin later wrote on his page on Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, that Western analysts were falsely portraying him as having turned on Mr. Putin.

That quick turnaround was to be expected whether or not Dugin specifically intended to criticize Putin with this Kings of the Rain warning. After all, Putin has (allegedly) left a trail of dead journalists in his wake and silenced his rivals, including Alexei Nalvany, who will probably never emerge from prison again after spending nearly a decade behind bars. In the meantime, Russian troops are continuing to abandon heavy artillery (including tanks) in Ukraine, basically handing victories to Zelensky’s forces. Despite a massive draft, Russia is still losing the numbers game with boots on the ground, so it seems like a matter of time before Putin really threatens to go nuclear in a desperate effort to win his war.

(Via New York Times)