Category: News

Courtney Barnett’s Here And There travelling festival is in full swing. The novel series of shows has seen the Aussie singer and guitarist putting together stacked bills at each city that Here And There stops at, with a different, yet equally decorated, cast at each stop. From Lucy Dacus and Japanese Breakfast to Sleater-Kinney and Bartees Strange, this is a pretty rad “festival” concept that Barnett is currently on. But she’s taking it a step further…

The Here And There: B-Sides, Live Tracks + Demos compilation, is a limited-run cassette tape compilation album, with all proceeds going to benefit the National Network Of Abortion Funds and Advocates For Youth. Artists from the Here And There fest that are featured on the compilation include Sleater-Kinney, Julia Jacklin, Faye Webster, and more. With the announcement of the limited, 1,200-copy run of tapes, Barnett has also released a digital demo of her track, “If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight,” from her album Things Take Time, Take Time
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Listen to the “If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight” demo version above. Check out the album artwork and full tracklist of the compilation below and order a copy of the tape here.

Side 1

1. Julia Jacklin – “Vegas Wedding” (Demo)
2. Bedouine – “Wasn’t Me” (Live)
3. The Beths – “Keep The Distance” (Demo)
4. Faye Webster – “Come To Atlanta” (Live from Chase Park Transduction)

Side 2

5. Sleater-Kinney – “Complex Female Characters” (Live)
6. Courtney Barnett – “If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight” (Demo)
7. Caroline Rose – “Soma” (Demo)
8. Hana Vu – “Maker” (Live From The Parking Lot Sessions)

Here And There: B-Sides, Live Tracks + Demos is available now via Milk! Records here.

Young Money Cash Money Billionaires may in fact be true for one of the members of the YMCMB collective: According to Nicki Minaj, who reunited with her Young Money labelmates Lil Wayne and Drake during the latter’s October World Festival in Toronto last weekend, the “Way 2 Sexy” hitmaker may be a billionaire.

In a video shared to Minaj’s Instagram Story yesterday, she is seen boarding a private jet. In the clip, she says, “This is what happens when you got a rich — I’m sorry, a very rich, rich, rich, rich — Canadian friend… who is the only billionaire that I know that don’t want people to know he a billionaire.”

While she didn’t refer to anyone by name, fans immediately assumed the “Canadian friend” was Drake. Later that day, fans immediately caught wind of Minaj liking a tweet reading, “Shoutout to @Drake for being a billionaire too, even though you ain’t want no one to know.”

If this is true, Drake is among one of very few rappers in the coveted billionaires club, alongside Jay-Z, who reached billionaire status in 2019 by way of his $75 million catalog, as well as his stakes in Tidal, Uber, Armand de Brignac, and D’Usse. Kanye West attained billionaire status in 2020, mostly in part to his Yeezy fashion empire. He even surpassed Jay and has reached a net worth of $2 billion.

Minaj is set to drop her much anticipated new single, “Super Freaky Girl,” this Friday.

Steve Martin will be the subject of a two-part documentary from A24 and Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville. The deep dive into the actor and comedian’s life will stream on Apple TV. While there’s no official release date or even a title, the Martin documentary is currently in production and he seems pretty excited about what the filmmaking team has already found in their research.

Via The Hollywood Reporter:

“It’s somebody else’s take,” Martin tells THR of the process. “They found a lot of archival stuff. “They found a photo of my father in 1944 in Germany, touring Our Town with the USO.”

For as well known as he is, Martin hasn’t done that much mining of his personal story. He published one memoir, Born Standing Up, about his years as a stand-up comedian in 2007. A book about his years in film, Number One Is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions, is due in November and, as Martin describes it, is a collection of anecdotes and illustrations.

Martin is enjoying a career resurgence thanks to Only Murders in the Building, which he not only stars in, but helped write and create. The Hulu series also stars Martin Short and Selena Gomez and has become a fan favorite on the streaming network. The second season is currently airing and has spawned a hit single “Angel in Flip-Flops,” and surprisingly, not because of Gomez. Martin is actually the pop sensation this time around, and the track even got the music video treatment.

Only Murders in the Building is available for streaming on Hulu.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

In the wake of the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago earlier this week, the Donald Trump stans at Fox News didn’t quite know what to do with themselves or how to cover this unprecedented bit of news—or whether to talk about it at all. So some of them, like Jesse Watters went straight to claiming it’s all a conspiracy theory.

On Tuesday night, the same clown who once brought DJ Pauly D from The Jersey Shore on as an inflation expert told Fox News viewers that the FBI showed up at the former president’s Palm Beach residence in order to plant evidence against him. “These are bloodthirsty savages who want to see you humiliated and violated,” Watters claimed, according to Media Matters. “This is a threat to anybody who opposes them. Look what we can do to you. We can even storm into your president’s home and take whatever we want.”

Yet, he didn’t stop there. Without offering a shred of even the tiniest bit of evidence — unless getting Lindsey Graham to say “yeah” counts as proof — Watters suggested that the FBI’s visit was all about planting evidence on a twice-impeached president who is currently under investigation by multiple entities for all sorts of wrongdoing (and whose history of shady dealings is well-known and firmly documented):

They could have easily negotiated the return of documents like that without guns and warrants. What the FBI is probably doing is planting evidence, which is what they did during the Russia hoax. We also have a hunch they doctored evidence to get the warrant — again, what they did during the Russia hoax. So, this is a big fishing expedition, using anything they can against Trump to take him out of the race for 2024. Or, just hang this dark cloud over his head like they did with the Mueller investigation. Remember, they knew for two years there was no crime but they tried to frame the president for obstructing a crime he didn’t commit? They crossed a very serious line with this and they’re never coming back. And everybody involved in this needs to be prosecuted for misconduct, disbarred and have their pension stripped. And that’s just the beginning.

But he wasn’t done there! Watters also claimed that going after Trump was a sexual fetish of the Left.

He also claimed that every American feels “violated” by the raid (they do not).

At this point, it feels like Watters and his Fox cohorts are just emptying the Cry Wolf bag and hoping that something sticks. You can watch even more of his hot air from last night below, courtesy of Media Matters:

(Via Media Matters)

It seems like Dolly Parton is always doing some good, and now the state of Ohio is recognizing her for it: Governor Mike DeWine declared that in the state, August 9 is now Dolly Parton Day.

The official proclamation further outlines the reasons for the honor, reading in part, “Whereas, celebrated country music performer Dolly Parton is widely regarded not only for her achievements as a singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, but also as an actress, author, businesswoman, humanitarian and philanthropist; and whereas, among her philanthropic ventures, in 1995, she launched Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to instill a love of reading among the children of Sevier County, Tennessee, where she grew up; and whereas, Dolly soon expanded the effort and began mailing one free, age-appropriate book to children every month from birth to age 5. […] Whereas, the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Of Ohio, founded in 2019 with financial support from the Ohio General Assembly and affiliates across the state, is available in all 88 counties. Whereas, today, more than 327,000 kids in Ohio receive their free book through the program each month.”

The day was declared in preparation of Parton’s visit to the state yesterday (August 9), where she spoke at Ohio State University’s Ohio Union about her free book program. Per The Columbus Dispatch, she explained the motivation behind the program, saying, “Daddy didn’t get a chance to read and write and he was always kind of embarrassed by that. I just always felt my heart was always heavy that my Daddy felt like there was something he couldn’t do, because we thought he could do anything.”

Parton also showed off her classic wit when asked how she’d like to be remembered in 100 years, responding, “I want them to say, ‘Golly, she looks good for her age.’ But in addition to that, I just want to be a person remembered for trying to make life a little better for myself as well as everybody else.”

Those callings in your head are all too real. Flight 828 will eventually return to Netflix after NBC probably (?) regrets cancelling the fan favorite show. This will allow Manifest creator Jeff Rake to (hopefully) make sense of all of the various, seemingly random story threads happening at the end of Season 3, and maybe we’ll learn exactly why that flight disappeared in the first place.

When will Manifest return, though?

That’s a complicated question. The show hasn’t been missing for five years (like the passengers), but still, it’s been awhile, and with storylines involving the death of a major character and all of that cult business still simmering in the background, we still don’t know why Michaela was hearing messages from a mysterious female voice. We do know that Stephen King is still a superfan and doesn’t want to hear “trust me” or that phrase I kind-of just used (“it’s complicated”), but other than that, he’s all good. A cryptic teaser showed Michaela in a shipyard and told us nothing.

What we do know is this: Manifest got cancelled by NBC and picked up by Netflix for a super-sized final season of 20 episodes. TV Line originally reported that we’ll see the season “be delivered in multiple parts” coming “late this year.” Whereas Rake told fans, responded, “I’m hearing November.”

Then there’s some fun that we can have speculating about when the finale episode will arrive: If the first episodes arrive in 2022, Netflix might want to pace the show to end on the passengers’ “death date” as stated in the series. However, that date — June 2, 2024 — is a ways away and might actually (and I’m speculating here) be the planned end date of the show as Rake conceived it (following six planned seasons). Instead, Rake will shove all of those seasons into one package, but what of the death date? A Reddit theory loves that that date, but I’m not sure that Manifest fans can stay patient that long.

However, we do know this: Manifest will return in 2022, likely in the early-to-mid fall months. Fingers crossed for sooner reather than later.

At some point in the not-so-distant future, Megan Thee Stallion is set to release a new album (which appears to be called Traumazine). Ahead of then, Meg has gone ahead and pulled back the curtain on the upcoming project a little bit via Twitter.

Last night, Megan started responding to fan tweets, with one fan asking, “You said the album was a lot of self-reflection. What inspired you to take this route for the album?” She replied, “I wrote this album for myself… I wanted to start writing in a journal but I said f*ck it I’ll put it in a song.”

Somebody else asked how long the tracklist is and Meg noted it’ll have 18 tracks. Another user wondered, “Was it hard for you to write songs for this project.” Meg answered, “Yes very [pleading face emoji] saying certain things you’ve never said out loud before is hard.”

A user asked if any songs on the album are going to be longer than two minutes and Meg said, “Now y’all know ima 3 verse type of girl so yes lol.”

Shortly after that, Megan decided she had spilled enough tea, tweeting, “Ok wait actually let’s not talk abt this tonight lol.”

Check out the tweets below.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

So far, Beyoncé has offered plenty of ways to enjoy “Break My Soul,” whether it’s via the original version, one of the four remixes from the EP, or the Madonna-featuring “Queens Remix” of the song. After the latter version came out, Madonna got a nice gift from Beyoncé.

Yesterday, Madonna took to her Instagram Story to show off a note from Beyoncé, accompanied by some flowers. The message reads, “Thank you, Queen. I’m so grateful for you. You have opened so many doors for so many women. You are masterpiece genius. Thank you for allowing me to sing in your song and thank you for naming the remix!!!! Love always and forever, B.”

Madonna wrote on the post, “thank you!! from one [queen] to another [queen]. I love the Re-Mix! @beyonce.” She also shared another photo showing off the massive bouquet of white flowers.

As for the part of Beyoncé’s message about “allowing me to sing in your song” despite this being a remix of her own song, that’s a nod to the remix sampling Madonna’s “Vogue.”

The “Queens Remix,” true to its name, shouts out a number of prominent female musicians past and present, some of whom offered reactions to the nods.

Check out Madonna’s posts below.

The Detroit Lions drafting Aidan Hutchinson with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft seemed like a perfect match, as Detroit needed a potential pillar along its defensive line and Hutchinson was the Heisman Trophy runner-up less than an hour away at the University of Michigan. While that didn’t quite happen — the Jacksonville Jaguars got the top pick — Detroit was still able to get their man with the second pick.

Hutchinson projects to be a potentially special player in the league, and as we learned on Tuesday night, he’s a pretty good entertainer, too. The latest season of Hard Knocks debuted on HBO, with the Lions at the center of the show. One scene got teased by Adam Schefter of ESPN as possibly “the most entertaining rookie singing moment in show history,” and we’ll be honest: it lived up to the billing.

Here is the video, in which Hutchinson sings Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” during a team meeting and gets so into it that the entire team starts singing and dancing along.

Kudos to Hutchinson for doing such a good job that it was impossible for the entire room to not join in on the fun. The Detroit Lions got themselves a good one, both as a defensive lineman and as a bringer of incredibly good vibes.

Technically, the Golden Globes happened this year, as they have since 1944. They just weren’t on television, for the first time since a Writers Guild strike caused its on-air cancellation in 2008. After years of criticism about, among other things, a lack of diversity and corruption. They promised they would clean up their act, in the hopes that they’d be welcomed back to the airwaves. And now it appears it’s (probably) worked.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group behind the Globes, are in talks with NBC about getting them back on the small screen. Things will be a bit different, though. Traditionally the ceremony airs on a Sunday in January. But some of the January Sundays in 2023 are already booked, by New Year’s Day, by the NFL’s last game of the season (Jan. 8), and by Critics Choice Awards (Jan. 15). So they’ll likely be moving to Jan. 10, a Tuesday.

That said, Deadline reports one source saying it’s “not a done deal.” So hang onto your horses.

The Globes have often been founts of unflattering news. Ricky Gervais went from a (mostly) enjoyably venomous host to a crank who clearly didn’t want to be there anymore. (He still wouldn’t mind returning, with some conditions.) Funnily enough, the last time he hosted was also the last time it aired, so maybe it’s fate. Then there’s the virtual 2021 iteration, which featured such exciting sights as nominees Jeff Daniels recording from what looked like a spare room in his house to Al Pacino appearing to take a nap.