Category: News

Charlie Puth knows how to keep the attention on him, whether that’s through pranks on Jimmy Kimmel Live or viral thirst traps that reveal almost everything. This is helpful considering he’s in the midst of promoting his forthcoming LP Charlie, which arrives next month. All this is to say that he just announced the One Night Only tour, and tickets will likely sell out quickly.

The pop star will kick off the run at the end of October in Red Bank, New Jersey at Count Basie Center for the Arts. It’ll go through some of November, finishing up in Los Angeles at The Theatre at Ace Hotel. It’s only a quick eight shows, but they’ll definitely be a special way to celebrate his album. Check out the dates below and find ticket information here.

10/23 – Red Bank, NJ @ Count Basie Center for the Arts
10/25 – New York, NY @ Beacon Theatre
10/27 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall
10/29 – Washington, DC @ Warner Theatre
10/31 – Boston, MA @ Orpheum Theatre
11/03 – Chicago, IL @ Auditorium Theatre
11/07 – San Francisco, CA @ Davies Symphony Hall
11/09 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Theatre at Ace Hotel

Charlie is out 10/7 via Atlantic. Pre-save it here.

Charlie Puth is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE – The good show is coming back

What we have here is a classic Good News, Bad News situation. As always, we start with the Good News, because you should always lead with the positive when you can, especially on a Friday.

ABC’s Abbott Elementary is coming back for a second season next week. On Wednesday, September 21, to be specific. That’s great, mainly because Abbott Elementary is great, a fun and sweet and nice show in a world of difficult protagonists and dark comedies. There’s a place for those, of course, and a show like Barry that balances that heavy stuff with the silliest jokes you’ve ever seen is a borderline magic trick. But it’s nice to have a nice show, too. The Parks and Recreation vibes are off the charts here. This is, to be clear, one of the highest compliments I know how to give.

Quick background if you have yet to dive into the show, which you should remedy ASAP through a quick binge this weekend, which you can pull off because the 13 22-minute episodes in season one total just under five hours of total watch time: Creator Quinta Brunson plays Janine, a young teacher at the titular Abbott Elementary in Philadelphia. The show follows her and the other teachers and staff at the school through a mockumentary format as they try to make things work for the students despite layers of budget restrictions and incompetence above them. It’s delightful.

It’s also kind of a unicorn out there right now, a network sitcom that has full-on landed itself in the zeitgeist in 2022. Do you realize how wild that is? Hundreds of streaming services and cable networks pounding content into our eyeballs at 800mph every day and one of the buzziest shows out there airs once a week on a channel that has existed since the 1940s. That’s… crazy. This is the same distribution model they used for, like, Frasier. And Happy Days. Which gave Henry Winkler his start in television as The Fonz like 50 years ago. The same Henry Winkler who now stars in Barry. Think about that a little bit this weekend.

The show does what all good workplace sitcoms do. It creates and solves conflicts in a single half-hour block, it develops a found family among the characters, and it just generally makes you feel kind of good. I like that. I also like that it is set in Philadelphia because I have lived in Eastern Pennsylvania for my entire life and inside the Philadelphia city limits for about 10 years off and on and I turn into the literal version of the DiCaprio Pointing Meme about once an episode when they reference a local landmark or restaurant or sports franchise. Go Birds.

The show is littered with heavy hitters in its cast, too. Brunson is great, and also serves as one of the show’s main writers, which is almost unfair from a “too much talent in one person” standpoint, but fine. Tyler James Williams plays her Will They, Won’t They love interest and nails the “I don’t really want to be here forever” energy of a career striver. Janelle James plays the confident and massively underqualified principal, Lisa Ann Walter plays a South Philly Italian lady who always knows a guy who can get you a thing, Chris Perfetti plays the dorky teacher who tries way too hard, and Sheryl Lee Ralph plays the teacher who has been there forever and is kind of everyone’s mother. We’ll talk about her more in the next section. It’s a perfectly populated universe.

None of those people are my favorite, though. My favorite is the eccentric janitor, Mr. Johnson. He’s a cranky old man who has lots of opinions about lots of things and pops up every now and then to do, well, this.

I’ll say it again, just for the people in the back: Give this show a shot. It’s a blast. See what everyone is talking about. There’s a chance you’ll try it and decide it’s not your thing, which is fine, but if you can honestly watch a warm little comedy about teachers in Philadelphia trying to make it work for their kids while stumbling into various goofs and/or workplace romances, buddy… I don’t know. Maybe go do a little work on yourself and circle back. It’ll still be there waiting for you when you’re ready.

All of this brings me to the bad news that I mentioned up front, which is, uh… that I structured this entire write-up very poorly because there is no bad news. I have things to work on, too.

ITEM NUMBER TWO – Speaking of Abbott Elementary

The Emmys were this week. On a Monday. Which was weird. Awards shows should be on Sunday nights, in my opinion, which I say as a person who spent most of this week trying to figure out what day it was. It’s madness. I’m filing this with my editor now based on the assumption that today is Friday, but I have no way of knowing for sure.

But anyway, the Emmys. Sheryl Lee Ralph won for her performance on Abbott Elementary — good show, see above — and then marched up onto the stage and gave this speech. Holy Toledo. I think, truthfully, that if Sheryl Lee Ralph asked me to crash headfirst through a brick wall, I would at least consider it. I might ask for a helmet first. I would do it without one if she insisted. What an absolute force of a human being.

But then there’s the other thing. There was controversy at the Emmys. Jimmy Kimmel did this bit where he pretended to be dead on stage while presenting an award and continued pretending to be dead during the acceptance speech by the winner, Quinta Brunson from… Abbott Elementary. (I swear it’s a good show.) People were mad. People including Sheryl Lee Ralph. Via Deadline:

At ABC’s TCA day Wednesday, the actors were asked about how it played in the room when Brunson, the EP and star of the ABC comedy, accepted her first Emmy with Kimmel lying motionless below her. Co-star Lisa Ann Walter thought it “played funny,” but Ralph, who won an Emmy of her own Monday, was having none of it.

“I was absolutely confused,” she told reporters. “I didn’t know what was going on. I wish that man would just get up off the ground. Then I realized it was Jimmy Kimmel. Ooh, the disrespect, Jimmy! But that’s just me. I told him, too, to his face. He understood.”

“I told him, too, to his face. He understood.” Uhhhh yeah. I bet he did. If Sheryl Lee Ralph looked me in the eye and told me she was disappointed in my tomfoolery, I suspect I would die immediately. I would turn into a pile of dust and blow off into the first reasonably stiff breeze. Little particles of me would be floating through the atmosphere for centuries. You would breathe them in and be like “Hmm, this air tastes pathetic” and you would be correct. So let’s go ahead and try to avoid that whole situation. Sheryl Lee Ralph, if you are reading this, I am sorry. Just in general. A blanket apology for everything I have done or might do.

Please do not yell at me.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – I need everyone keep asking Brian Cox for his opinion on things

The thing I like about Brian Cox is that he will be doing an interview and answering the questions as they are asked and then out of nowhere, kablow, he’ll just take a shot at something that’s barely related. It’s delightful. It’s probably less delightful if it’s about you or your thing, but it isn’t this time, probably, unless you work on the show Billions or are Ian McKellan, so let’s all go ahead and enjoy it.

Look at the collection of quotes he gave just this week. Look at how absolutely unnecessary they are. It’s great. The man loves acting and talking shit and not particularly in that order. Here’s Exhibit A:

“I don’t know . No one’s had their contracts renewed,” Cox told British publication The Times. “Who knows how long it will go on? We don’t want it to overstay its welcome, like ‘Billions’; that’s past its sell-by date. That will not happen with our show.”

And here’s Exhibit B:

If the Billions cast and crew can find comfort in one thing, it’s that they weren’t the only ones caught in Cox’s crosshairs. The Putting The Rabbit In The Hat author clarified multiple comments he made about fellow stars in his book, including Johnny Depp, Steven Seagal, and Ian McKellen.

Cox shared that McKellen was “a sweetheart, nicer as he’s gotten older” but that “he’s just not my favorite actor.” He added, “I’m going up to Edinburgh and he’s got his Hamlet on. I’ve heard it’s awful.”

Perfect. All of it. I want to interview Brian Cox and spend all of my allotted time just asking for his opinion on various things. Zero questions about his life or career. I want to ask him what he thinks about, like, Outback Steakhouse or the musical stylings of Harry Styles. Dozens of questions like that, one after the other. Lightning round. I feel like I could get him to call something “rubbish.” That would be great. Until he gets sick of my hooey and starts taking shots at me. Although, now that I think about it, that would be kind of great, too.

There are no losers here. Except for Billions and Ian McKellan. Didn’t work out too well for them. But still.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – Let’s check in with Engla-… aaaaaaand there’s a Paddington crisis

The Queen of England died. You knew that. It was all over the news and social media. It was a pretty big deal. Such a big deal, in fact, that the citizens of England have been flooding various Royal areas to leave her tributes, which is a nice gesture, except for the thing where some of those tributes have involved hundreds of stuffed little Paddington Bears and actual marmalade sandwiches. That’s not working out so well. I imagine a marmalade sandwich that is sitting on a sidewalk in September does not have a long shelf life.

I should make a couple of things very clear here:

• There’s a reason people are doing this, which is that a video of Paddington meeting the Queen went viral again after her death and everyone got pretty excited about it
• When I die, you have my permission to just litter my gravesite with stuffed Paddington dolls and any kind of sandwich you want, pile them up to the sky for all I care

It all gets better, too, because an official person in the parks department in England had to put out an official statement to ask people to stop doing this, and whoever wrote it went to great lengths to avoid saying “stop leaving the damn bears everywhere.”

In the interests of sustainability, we ask visitors to only lay organic or compostable material. The public will be asked to remove all wrapping from floral tributes and place these in the bins provided. Removing the wrapping will aid the longevity of the flowers and will assist in subsequent composting which will start between one week and a fortnight after the date of the funeral.

We would prefer visitors not to bring non-floral objects/artefacts such as teddy bears or balloons. Cards and labels will, however, be accepted and will be periodically removed by The Royal Parks’ staff and contractors for storage offsite. This process will be carried out with discretion and sensitivity.

A few additional notes, also via bullet point:

• Let Paddington be the King of England
• Make that the next movie
• I bet Timothee Chalamet would be a really good Paddington villain

This was a pretty good chat.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – This is good advertising

Well, guess what: Danny DeVito is the new spokesman for Jersey Mike’s. This feels… right. It feels right. Like, of course Danny DeVito should be the spokesman for a national hoagie chain based out of New Jersey. The bigger surprise here is that it did not happen until 2022. This should have happened in, like, the early 1990s, if anyone anywhere had been doing their job properly. A lot of people who run hoagie businesses have a lot of reflecting to do today.

Here’s some info from the press release, via FastCasual.

Jersey Mike’s Subs is launching a national advertising campaign starring actor and comedian Danny DeVito — a New Jersey native who grew up down the street from the original sub shop that opened in 1956 at the Jersey Shore

“It’s A Jersey Mike’s Thing” celebrates the company’s point of difference — its authentic fresh sliced and fresh grilled sub sandwiches made to order, Rich Hope, CMO, Jersey Mike’s Franchise Systems, said in a press release.

“Who better to speak to the authenticity of Jersey Mike’s fresh sliced, fresh grilled sub sandwiches than the guy whose birthday is an official holiday in the state of New Jersey?” Hope said.

Exactly. Well said. But please do not let these adequately articulated words distract you from the real story here: Look at Danny DeVito’s face in this commercial.

Look at him.

LOOK AT HIM.

I do not especially want to do a deep self-examination about why Danny DeVito getting kind of horny about hoagies is making me so hungry right now, but it is. A lot. Like, I might stop typing this sentence to drive to Wawa. Which is probably not the result Jersey Mike’s is looking for. But this is on them for not putting a franchise closer to my apartment than he Wawa. They might want to reflect on that part, too.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Michael:

I was listening to the radio the other day and “Funkytown” by Lipps Inc came on. It got me thinking: are Flavortown and Funkytown arch rivals, like Dallas and Philadelphia? Cities in different time zones whose residents would just as soon beat the crap out of each other. Or are they like the Twin Cities, St. Paul and Minneapolis? Two neighboring cities that, as far as I know, get along reasonably well.

I know I have said this before but it really brings me a lot of pleasure and makes me feel I’ve made the right choices in life when some of you think these thoughts and then think “I should email Brian about this.” I am not joking or being sarcastic. I genuinely do enjoy it. Please do not ever hesitate to send me just the dumbest thing that has ever careened into your brain. It is quite literally what I am here for.

Well, that and posting these pictures from two separate Celebrity Flag Football games where Guy Fieri is eating sand while trying to play defense.

So I’m here for two things, really. Both equally important.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Oklahoma!

A tractor trailer overturned on I-40 near Oklahoma City Wednesday, spilling vibrators all over Mustang Road and closing the off ramp for several hours.

I know this section of this column has leaned very “highway spill” lately between this and the tomato/Alfredo spills the other week. I had another story all lined up for this one. I had even pasted the quotes into the text box here. But then this story broke on Thursday and, look… I’m only so strong. Dildos it is.

“This is a semi that overturned and lost its load here,” reporter Jim Gardner said from the Skynews 9 chopper. “There is a lot of stuff to clean up.”

An anchor for the station asked him: “Jim, can you tell what he’s carrying there? What’s all over the road?”

The most confusing thing for me in all of this is that the man in the chopper in this story has the same name as the longtime anchor of Action News in Philadelphia. That’s strange. And a lot of fun. Am I picturing Philadelphia icon Jim Gardner with his white mustache and deep well of gravitas up in a helicopter looking at a collection of loose dildos on the highway? Yes. Yes, I am. It’s really a lot of fun.

The camera zooms in. “It’s a mess for sure,” another anchor says. Gardner demurs: “We’re zooming in … not really. I can’t tell. Maybe you can tell?” No one on the station can seemingly tell.

I think the live video will help here. Let’s go ahead and post that.

And then let’s go to Vice — proud of you, Vice — for the hard-hitting journalism into what exactly those boxes are.

There are dozens of boxes of pink vibrators; some of them have seemingly come out of their packaging and were strewn on the street. But what kind of vibrators? With the help of Motherboard executive editor Emanuel Maiberg, we believe these are Adam & Eve G-Spot Touch Finger Vibes, which retail for $39.95.

I will be honest here: it had never occurred to me that a truck I’m flying past on the highway might be full of dildos. It just had not dawned on me even once. I suppose that’s on me, though. I can and will do better going forward. In conclusion, there was also allegedly lubricant in the spill, which when you combine the thing where this happened in Oklahoma with the thing where the very good Watchmen television show was set in Oklahoma, means I have a pretty great excuse to post this clip again.

Thank you to everyone involved for making this happen for me.

Leonardo DiCaprio has had a pretty quiet year. At the end of 2021, he starred in Don’t Look Up, the satirical apocalyptic comedy that may or may not come true in the coming years, but he has been out of the spotlight for most of 2022. That was, of course, until he decided to (allegedly) dump his 25-year-old girlfriend which did not help the rumors that he is unable to interact with anyone beyond their late twenties.

Still, he has been keeping a low profile, occasionally offering advice to his actor peers and drinking wine. DiCaprio is known for being relatively picky about his movie roles, so it’s not surprising that he took some time off. But Hwang Dong-hyuk thinks that maybe DiCaprio would be open to appearing in season two of Squid Game, which DiCaprio is a fan of.

Even though there aren’t any guest stars in place for the upcoming season, Hwang says that DiCaprio is a fan of the series, so maybe a cameo isn’t off the table. “There will be no known Hollywood actor in Season 2,” Hwang explained at a Netflix press conference this week. “That’s not in the plan and if the stage changes, maybe in Season 3 – but for Season 2, it is still set in Korea. Leonardo DiCaprio did say he’s a big fan of Squid Game, so maybe if time or chances allow, we can ask him to join the games.”

DiCaprio hasn’t starred in a TV show since appearing as little Luke Brower in the final season of Growing Pains in 1992. But he has a pretty steady roster of TV and miniseries production credits, so it’s safe to say that he still knows his way around a TV set, and might be willing to play some violent children’s games.

(Via Variety)

One of the absolute worst things that can happen to you on a night out is losing your phone. Especially somewhere crowded like a concert, your hopes for getting it back fall dramatically from “very low” to “practically nil.” But sometimes, some nice stranger actually does the nice thing and helps your phone find its way back to you. For one fan at a recent Baby Keem show, though, the person who returned their phone happened to be the artist they went to see.

The fan posted a video on TikTok explaining, “I lost my phone at a Baby Keem concert and found these on it months later.” “These” turned out to be a series of videos apparently recorded by Keem himself. Mushing his face right up into the camera while standing backstage, the Vegas rapper taunts, “Why the f*ck you throw your phone on the homie’s stage? Now your phone mine. Yeah, n***. Now your phone is mine.” Keem keeps the troll going in another video, asking, “How was you planning to get home, my n****? Why you throw your phone on the stage, bro? Stop throwing stuff on the stage, bro. Now you can’t get home ’cause I got your phone.”

In a third video, he admonishes the alleged phone tosser again, saying, “CJ, n****, you played, bro. Them n****s down there listening to [Chief Keef’s] ‘Faneto’ and you don’t have your phone to experience it, n****. I’ma give your sh*t back, and when you see this bro, don’t ever do this sh*t again, alright? That was really dumb.” True to his word, he somehow got the phone back to CJ, who in the caption of the TikTok refuted Keem’s accusation about throwing the phone onstage. “And no I did NOT throw my own phone up there,” the user wrote.

Either way, now they’ve got a fun story and a viral TikTok out of the situation, so win-win for everybody, right? But, because it probably bears repeating, please don’t throw things on stage at shows — especially not your phones. You might not get them back.

You can catch Baby Keem on tour with his big cousin Kendrick Lamar on the Big Steppers Tour.

While Brett Favre very publicly endorsed Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, and has been known to play golf with him, his proximity to the MAGA crime family has never really threatened to supersede his incredible football legacy — until now. On Thursday night, Seth Meyers gave a breakdown of the scandal currently surrounding the “retired quarterback and dungarees pitchman.”

While we’re still learning more about the story, texts from Favre — which have recently been made public — appear to show that the legendary athlete, who has an estimated net worth of $100 million, conspired with disgraced nonprofit founder Nancy New and former Mississippi governor Phil Bryant to essentially steal $5 million in funding meant for welfare recipients and funnel it into the construction of a new volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi, where Favre’s daughter plays.

All this for volleyball?

“Now remember, this is the same state — Mississippi — that’s also been facing a disastrous water crisis affecting the majority Black city of Jackson,” Meyers noted. “And yet the state’s Republicans are so cartoonishly corrupt they stole money set aside for poor people and gave it to a multimillionaire NFL quarterback.”

As far as facing the consequences goes, the Jets-hating Meyers suggested that “as punishment, from this point forward, Favre should not be remembered for his 16 seasons with the Green Bay Packers, but for his one season with the New York Jets. I’m sorry, Brett. Actions have consequences.”

Meyers went on to note that he often gets comments from international viewers that they don’t like when he makes Jets jokes, because they don’t understand them. So he took a minute to explain: “Football is a sport. The Jets are sh*t at football.” But that was getting away from Meyers’ main point:

The craziest part of this scandal is that Favre turns out to be just as dumb as all the other corrupt weirdos in Trump’s orbit. Because as the deal was happening, he apparently wrote a text message explaining he was concerned that people would find out it was happening.

It turns out, Favre had good reason to be worried.

You can watch the full segment above, beginning around the 8:30 mark.

The NBA’s punishment for Phoenix Suns and Mercury owner Robert Sarver has come under plenty of scrutiny. The league announced earlier this week in the aftermath of an independent investigation into numerous allegations of racism and sexism that Sarver will be suspended for a year and receive a fine of $10 million.

Adam Silver came under fire for how he tried to justify the decision, namely why Sarver is still allowed to own the team. In the days following, LeBron James, Chris Paul, and Suns minority owner Jahm Najafi have all spoken out against the extent of the punishment, with Najafi saying that Sarver should resign. And now, Sarver is coming under even more pressure to leave the team, as the Suns’ jersey sponsor made clear it will not renew its partnership with them if he’s around beyond this season.

“PayPal is a values-driven company and has a strong record of combatting racism, sexism and all forms of discrimination,” the company’s president and CEO, Dan Schulman, said in a statement. “We have reviewed the report of the NBA league’s independent investigation into Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver and have found his conduct unacceptable and in conflict with our values. PayPal’s sponsorship with the Suns is set to expire at the end of the current season. In light of the findings of the NBA’s investigation, we will not renew our sponsorship should Robert Sarver remain involved with the Suns organization, after serving his suspension.

While we strongly reject the conduct of Robert Sarver, we remain supportive of the team, its players and the experienced and diverse talent now leading the organization, including Head Coach, Monty Williams, General Manager, James Jones, Assistant General Manager, Morgan Cato, and Senior Vice President of People and Culture, Kim Corbitt.”

PayPal became the team’s jersey sponsor in 2018-19.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

If Sampa The Great was a man, her new album As Above, So Below would already be in the conversation as one of the top five rap albums of the year. As it is, I have to be Thanos in this situation and do it myself; Sampa’s new album doesn’t just deserve to be considered one of the top five rap albums of 2022… it is.

In hip-hop, we – in the royal sense, as in “all of us, more or less” – tend to do this thing where we hype up a new female rapper to a certain point, then immediately look for ways to understand her effort, talent, and skill by only comparing her to her female peers. This most often expresses itself as “beef,” e.g. Foxy vs. Kim, Cardi vs. Nicki, Megan vs. Nicki, Nicki vs. basically every woman with the temerity to pick up a mic and rhyme in front of people and get even a little bit popular for doing so.

And you know what? That’s so boring. Rap gets compared to basketball a lot, but it isn’t actually a competitive sport. Aside from a degree of breath control and verbal dexterity, there isn’t much athleticism involved. Rappers are basically talking, occasionally a little faster than normal. There’s no inherent reason to separate the men from the women, as we do the NBA from its counterpart, the WNBA. Ms. Minaj doesn’t need to dunk or guard someone who can.

An unfortunate byproduct of the tendency above is that we then often divide women into classes in a way that actually does generate unfair competition. Because we are so often trying to compare them, we tend to classify them as one of two types. You already know what I’m referring to here. The popular women, who make the streetwise, booty-shaking, strip club anthems, and the traditionalists, who supposedly dress modestly and adhere to the old-school ideals of bars-first “real hip-hop.”

But this leaves too many women, whose styles aren’t so easily classified, out of the conversation. Women like Sampa, whose biography is so unique among rappers of all genders. Born in Zambia, she was later raised in Botswana, then lived in California while studying music for visual media. She later moved to Sydney, Australia, where she got a degree in audio engineering and started her rap career in earnest, infusing her music with the diversity of sounds that have surrounded her since childhood as she shifts from earnest, thoughtful rhymes about her experiences to devastatingly direct battle raps as brash and bold as those of the staunchest rap purist’s.

As Above, So Below is her most complete work yet. With roots stretching throughout the diaspora, tapping traditional instruments and contemporary styles like the South African genre of kwaito, it’s every bit as ambitious and expansive as Beyoncé’s 2020 musical film Black Is King, but with a thread of authenticity that Sampa comes by naturally as a result of her upbringing. The musicality is on the same level as that of Little Simz’s 2021 album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, itself a criminally overlooked gem from that year that deserved more.

Gliding easily from triumphant African hip-hop on “Never Forget” to thumping, futuristic trap peppered with tribal chants on “Mask On,” As Above is every bit as adventurous musically as offerings this year from the likes of Kendrick Lamar and her Loma Vista labelmate Denzel Curry, who makes an appearance on the lead single “Lane.” Sampa rhymes and sings with the sort of gravity that pulled listeners to Lamar’s effort, but trims the unwieldy and grating moments that made that project so polarizing on its release in May.

Yes, we can attribute the difference in responses to other reasons; Sampa spent the last few years in her home country as a result of the pandemic, Americans have largely been reticent to embrace hip-hop from overseas, and Sampa is on an indie label, which limits her promotional release. On the other hand, it seems like every two weeks, there is a new viral sensation bubbling up from the depths of TikTok to become Rap America’s latest sweetheart. The point is, we shouldn’t even be able to make an argument that gender contributed to rap fans’ relative nescience of Sampa’s virtuosity.

Because, even with all those other potential arguments, there’s no reason we aren’t breathlessly dissecting the bars on “IDGAF” or hailing “Let Me Be Great” as a potential Grammy winner. African artists are more popular than ever here; Burna Boy, Wizkid, and more have broken out as legitimate pop stars. Rap’s spotlight on women – albeit, only a certain type of women – is brighter than ever. As Above is every bit as musically dynamic and artistically challenging as any other hip-hop album. And we are going to start the discussion.

As Above, So Below is out now via Loma Vista Recordings and Concord. You can stream and purchase it here.

Jeffrey Dahmer is a real-life American horror story, so it’s fitting that Ryan Murphy is the one to tell his story. Netflix has revealed the first trailer for Dahmer – Monster: the Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a limited series from Murphy starring Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer, the “Milwaukee Cannibal” who killed — and occasionally devoured — 17 victims between 1978 and 1991. “What do you do in there?” Dahmer’s neighbor, Glenda Cleveland (Niecy Nash), asks him in the creepy trailer above. “The smells. Power tools going all hours of the night. I hear screaming coming from your apartment.” As an apology, Dahmer gives her a gift: a sandwich filled with meat. What kind of meat? It ain’t pork.

Anyway, sorry for ruining your lunch today. My bad.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

From the Emmy award winning creator of American Crime Story comes Dahmer – Monster: the Jeffrey Dahmer Story. The series examines the gruesome and horrific true crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer and the systemic failures that enabled one of America’s most notorious serial killers to continue his murderous spree in plain sight for over a decade.

Dahmer – Monster: the Jeffrey Dahmer Story (a hyphen and a colon in the title should be reserved for Mission: Impossible movies only) premieres on Netflix on September 21.

That I didn’t greet Confess, Fletch star Jon Hamm with a far too informal, “you did it, you brilliant maniac, you actually did it!” when he logged onto our recent Zoom call is, I think, a personal triumph of restraint. For 30+ years Hollywood has tried and spectacularly failed to find a way back to Fletch, teasing us all with the possibility of talents like Ben Affleck, Kevin Smith, Bill Lawrence, and Jason Sudeikis stepping into the role.

As a fan of the franchise (the Gregory Mcdonald novels and Chevy Chase ’80s movies), I have risen and fallen with the lifecycle of these rumors — the buzz, the silence, the death, the glimmer of hope lighting the way for the next contestant. But now it’s here (on VOD and in select theaters), a rebirth for the smilingly sarcastic investigative reporter who leads with his wits even when they back him into a tough situation. How did Hamm, director Greg Mottola, and the rest of the team do it? Well, it starts with not being beholden to the most famous iteration of the character or being intimidated by the many failed attempts that came before.

I spoke with you at Comic-Con in New York a few years ago, and at the start of it, there was a blank piece of paper on the table. I cracked a joke, you doodled something quickly, everybody laughed, and we got on with it. But afterward, you walked away and one of the other writers literally jumped on the table to grab the sketch and was like, “I am taking this home!”

I wish I knew what I had scribbled.

I just hope it’s mounted over her fireplace or another place of prominence.

I hope so too.

So, the history of trying to get Fletch off the ground is so long. It almost feels like it was cursed. I didn’t believe this was actually real until the end credits. Was that history of failed efforts intimidating?

No, is the short answer. If you look back on how long it’s been since the original film came out and then the sequel came out, we’re talking well over 30 years, and a lot can happen and a lot has happened, not only to our industry but how movies are made, how they’re distributed, how they’re sold, how they’re everything. And then you sprinkle a little pandemic on top of all of it, and the amount of obstacles that had to be overcome are various and sundry and impressive. So I was happy that we got to make it. I had been a fan of the books, I had heard rumblings of certain people going to try to reboot the franchise and this person and that person, and it never happened for whatever reason. I don’t know why.

I knew that once we got the rights and they fell to me, and Bill Block from Miramax said, “We really want you. We want to make this thing,” I knew that we could put together a team that would make the best version of it. And that’s what I feel like we did. We made a Fletch for the 21st century. We successfully reintroduced this character much more based on the character that existed in the books. And hopefully in success, we’re going to get a chance to make as many more of these as there are novels, and there are quite a few novels left. I know we have a lot of love from the Gregory Mcdonald estate, that was always nice to hear that they were excited about what we were doing. And yeah, I enjoyed doing it, so I’m looking forward to getting a chance to do more.

Why this specific book as the jumping-on point?

It’s funny how kind of perfectly this book actually fits the kind of circumstances. Fletch is basically retired, he’s living in Europe, he’s writing about an obscure Western artist, and he’s sort of pulled back into the game. He doesn’t want to do it, but he has to. And of course, things spiral rapidly out of control and into heightened comic insanity, and that’s what we like. So the setup was right there, like, “Well, let’s pull him back into the game, and now here we are.” That was kind of why we picked it, and the rest was that the story’s interesting, it took place in an interesting city. It obviously takes place in the ’70s in the book, which we thought briefly about, “Oh, maybe we make it a period piece. Maybe that’s more fun.” And then we were like, “No, let’s just make it in the here and now. We’ll just adapt it in a real way.” Which proved to have some challenges.

The wonderful thing about Gregory Mcdonald’s writing is that he is very cognizant of weaving in kind of social commentary into his stories. So the social issues of the day in the ’70s weren’t exactly the same as they are in the 2020s, but that was easy enough, I suppose, to adapt. I’m glad I didn’t have to do it, but Greg is very adept at doing that, and he was able to bring in the absurdity of Instagram influencers and bring in the realities of ride-sharing and what have you into this story and make it very modern, and also make it very approachable for a new generation.

I’d read how you shoplifted some of the Mcdonald novels back in the day, and I’m curious how you identified with the character then versus how you identify with him now.

Obviously, reading the books as a teenager in the ’80s, Gregory Mcdonald was still alive, he was still actively writing the books, they were still kind of being made, and you were much closer to that era. And I was certainly much closer to that era, although I would’ve been a kid back then. So there’s a little bit of a different connection to it, but the majority of it was they were funny to me then and they’re funny to me now, and I can understand in a more mature kind of grown-up way why they’re funny. Part of that is, what I think I really got more of [from] the character now, is the understanding that this guy is a liver of life. He’s a curator of experiences, we might say, and he’s very present in every room that he is in and taking people in, and he’s a good judge of character and he’s funny and he’s sophisticated, and he also enjoys a good poop joke or what have you.

So there’s a lot of sides to him, and he’s fascinating and he’s fascinated by a lot of things. I think that those are compelling things to watch on screen. I think when you have a character like that and you’re willing to go the distance in telling those stories, you can come up with a pretty rich environment to tell stories, and when you surround them with the phenomenal actors that we have in the film, it’s even more fun.

The charm of Fletch is really his ability to weave in an insult in a surgical way, just mock someone without them really catching it.

One thing that we really were cognizant of, and we really, really wanted to make sure we explored in the film, was that Fletch never punches down. The object of his derision is never somebody that is just fighting to keep it together. It’s always the kind of hoity-toity kind of ridiculousness. And that’s a pretty great comedy tradition that goes back to the Marx Brothers and The Three Stooges. Anybody that’s a little too big for their britches deserves a good take-down. Fletch does it with words, and I think that that’s part of what makes him very sophisticated and funny and part of what hews very close to my own personal sense of humor.

Did you feel any specific pressure to bring the funny a little more to meet expectations for fans of the original films as well as fans of the books?

Well, what we really didn’t want to do was stumble into doing an impression of either Chevy or of those films. I was perfectly happy to leave all of those choices that Chevy and the filmmakers in the ’80s made in the ’80s, because first of all, very, very little of that is from the book, that’s all Chevy’s stuff. And honestly, to me, it would sort of feel like stealing. It just didn’t sit right on me. We didn’t need the wigs and the teeth and the funny voices and the names, and the thises and the thats. We wanted to forge our own way, and we did. I think that that’s the choice that we made, and I think that that’s the right choice.

I think even if you look at the difference between the first film and Fletch Lives, they’re trying to catch that original lightning in a bottle, and it doesn’t really hold up as well as the first one does. So it’s a tricky balance to do, especially when you’re redoing it after so many years. You look at Top Gun, the same thing. They waited this long to make that film because they wanted to do it the way that they knew it would resonate. And so that’s why we chose the path down which to travel on this one, because we knew if we did it the right way, it would resonate.

The timing of this release is perfect for you to host SNL again, if you got the chance to host again, would we ever see Sergio The Sexy Sax Man again? Because my God, it’s one of my favorite things.

Well, I will say that I worked with a camera assistant on a film recently who is related to Tim Cappello, who is the original Sexy Sax Man from The Lost Boys, and he sent me an autographed picture and a bunch of stuff and I felt very honored by that. He seems like a very nice guy. I don’t know. I remember when Andy Samberg and Jorma and Akiva wrote that sketch, I was like, “Well, this is never going to make it to air,” and boy did it. So I don’t know. I’d love to host the show again. I love that show so much. I work so much that finding a free week is very hard, so that’s kind of the thing I’ve been running into, but yeah, anytime they call, I tend to drop whatever I can do and run, because I love being a part of that world.

‘Confess, Fletch’ is now available on VOD and in select theaters.

As the Pennsylvania Senate Race enters the final stretch, John Fetterman is making Dr. Oz own the “cheap shots” that his campaign took at Fetterman’s stroke. The Pennsylvania lieutenant governor was hospitalized during the primary, and he has not shied away from thanking his wife, Gisele Fetterman, for noticing the signs of a stroke and saving his life. After taking it easy during the summer, Fetterman has made an increased number of public appearances.

However, when it came time to schedule a debate, Fetterman was transparent about how he still suffers from lingering auditory issues that are improving. This opened the door for Oz’s campaign to make another attack on Fetterman’s stroke and question whether he’s fit for office. During a recent appearance on Alex Wagner Tonight, Fetterman said he’s taking the campaign barbs in strike because they’re nothing compared to almost dying. Via Mediaite:

It was very bracing to face the fact that I could have died. And thinking about that, reflecting on that, that the fact that a father of three young children and a wife, and thinking of all those things. I promise you that is 10 times bigger and 10 times harder than the cheap shots that Dr. Oz has chosen to choose in his campaign.

While Fetterman understands that his health was eventually going to dragged into race, he called out Oz for trying to distance himself from his own campaign over the stroke comments.

“He needs to own those kind of words because a doctor choosing to mock someone who is recovering from a stroke, I don’t believe demonstrates that he’s lost his way,” Fetterman said. “In fact, he has never had his way.”

As for a debate between the two candidates, it’s on. Not only has Fetterman agreed to a date, he’s actively promoting the event on social media to counter the narrative from Oz’s campaign that Fetterman is afraid to take the stage with Oz.

(Via Mediaite)