Category: News

While the idea of having beef with someone who technically doesn’t exist may sound strange, hip-hop fans are sparking several conversations about the state of the genre following the signing of FN Meka to Capitol Records. FN Meka has one billion views and 10 million followers on TikTok. He is also a product of artificial intelligence.

Upon the announcement of his record deal, many have taken to social media to vocalize their chagrin, some saying that this is a result of labels not wanting to set aside big budgets for artists.

“Stupid f*cking precedent has been set,” said Twitter user @Louslocker. “Attack on artists. Labels wanna be cheap and not have to pay real artists so they’re making bots [so] they can keep 100% profit. This sh*t is gross.”

Others have argued that this is unfair to real-life artists, many of whom have spent years working behind the scenes without the support of a major label, only to passed over for what’s technically a robotic entity.

“So you’re telling me Capitol records just gave an AI robot named FN Meka a rap deal before any of my clients????,” said producer D. Shim in a tweet. “He’s not even a human being and got 10 million followers on tik tok. What is the world coming to? Will AI robots replace human creation? I need answers. Like right now.”

Some people would even posit to say that this is a rip-off of other bands and artists who have done something similar.

“Gorilliaz did it first,” said Twitter user @Romoface

If you must, you can check out FN Meka’s new single, “Florida Water,” with Gunna and Clix here.

The Miami Heat have had a quiet offseason after earning the 1-seed in the East a season ago. They saw PJ Tucker leave for the Philadelphia 76ers, while retaining Victor Oladipo, Dewayne Dedmon, and Caleb Martin, and to this point have made no significant upgrades to the roster to offset the departure of Tucker.

There will be plenty wondering if they’ve done enough to stay near the top of a crowded East, particularly after the Celtics and Sixers each made some quality additions. Miami, as they often do, are banking on their guys and their culture as being enough, and there is no one they view as more important to the latter part of that equations than Udonis Haslem. The longtime Miami veteran hasn’t played much in recent years — he hasn’t appeared in more than 16 games since the 2015 season — but every year he re-signs to maintain his presence with the organization.

This summer there was some wonder as to whether Haslem would return, but that got answered on Sunday when he announced at a youth camp he was indeed signing on for a 20th NBA season in Miami.

Haslem’s presence on the roster is not unanimously favored by Heat fans, some of whom would prefer if he moved to a formal coaching role rather than being a de facto coach who takes up a roster spot. Still, the Heat insist he should remain on the active roster and keep offering him veteran minimum deals, and he’ll be back for Year 20, which may be his last (or could be just the latest).

Megan Thee Stallion is not shy about her love of anime and Japanese television and film. This weekend, at Summer Sonic Festival in Tokyo, Megan took the stage dressed as Sailor Moon, performing many of her hits, including several tracks from her latest album, Traumazine.

Since she first stepped onto the scene, Megan has been vocal about her love of anime, and has grown more in love with the art as adult. In a 2020 Instagram Live session with Tim Lyu of anime studio Crunchyroll, she said, “Being an adult and watching anime, I really like the storylines. You see a character who might not be the strongest. You grow with that the character…you meet new people along the way as they try to be the hero / become the person they need to be.”

Elsewhere in the chat, she revealed that while she had watched Sailor Moon, she initially couldn’t quite get into it.

“Every time there’s a fight, her boyfriend comes to save the day,” Megan said.

Regardless, she certainly slayed her outfit, and even more so, her performance, which she said received a large positive reaction from her Japanese fans.

“This whole stadium in JAPAN was going UP for me,” said Megan in a tweet. “You can’t fake thee love…im grateful.”

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

After Game 1, it seemed like the Connecticut Sun would cruise to the second round after a 25-point win over the Wings in which Dallas, who entered the series without their top-scorer in Arike Ogunbowale, looked overmatched and overwhelmed by the Sun’s defense.

However, the script was flipped in Game 2, as Dallas was the team that came out playing stifling defense, taking a 22-7 lead after the first quarter and never relinquishing that advantage. The Wings would go on to a 89-79 win that looks tighter than the game was for most of the afternoon, dominating the Sun on both ends to force a decisive Game 3 in Dallas, where the 6-seeded Wings will have a chance to advance to the semifinals on their home floor.

Marina Mabrey and Allisha Gray got things started for the Wings, as they took on the challenge of having to create more in Ogunbowale’s absence and brought the pressure to the Connecticut defense rather than the other way around.

While the Sun would settle in a bit in the second quarter, the Wings continued to maintain their lead thanks to their improved pace, pushing the ball in transition to avoid having to go at the Sun halfcourt defense every time down, like this Veronica Burton to Kayla Thornton push off a Connecticut miss.

That theme continued in the third, as Thornton continued to run hard off changes of possession, with the Sun not having any answers for the Wings going to a small ball lineup that applied more pressure on both ends of the floor.

At one point in the fourth quarter, Dallas held an 80-50 lead before a 22-2 run by the Sun made things briefly interesting and forced the Wings to put some starters back in the game for the final two minutes to close things out. Dallas was led by Thornton’s 20-point outburst, but she wasn’t alone as Gray had 15 points, seven assists, five rebounds, and three steals, Mabrey had 14 points and six rebounds, and Teaira McCowan added 17 points and 11 rebounds off the bench. It was an impressive performance and one would expect the smaller lineup will be back for Game 3 after the success they had playing with tempo in this one, with Dallas finally breaking its playoff win drought with its first in 13 years (back when the team was the Detroit Shock).

For the Sun, they’ll need to find ways to punish the Wings better for going small, namely crashing the offensive boards more effectively to limit those runout opportunities. Handling the ball pressure of Dallas will be vital as well, as eight of their ten turnovers were live-ball varieties on Wings steals, leading to more runout chances to avoid Connecticut’s set defense.

August has always been a ghost town for movies. The biggest blockbusters have already opened; people are presumed to be movied out. It’s when studios dump more modestly budgeted pictures, like this weekend’s Beast. It can also be a chance for underdog to slip in there and make more money than one would expect. Such is the case with Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.

As per Deadline, the latest anime film from the ever-expanding media empire was a surprise box office champ, opening to $20.1 million. That’s almost double what the weekend’s other big release, the Idris Elba killer lion thriller Beast, managed to haul, namely $11.5 million. It also greatly eclipsed heavy hitters like Bullet Train and even the summer’s big winner, Top Gun: Maverick.

The box office win is another biggie for its distributor, Crunchyroll (né Funimation), the anime and dorama streamer owned by Sony. Last spring, when theaters were still coping with hesitant audiences, they almost topped New Line’s Mortal Kombat with Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, which managed to come in second for the weekend with $21.2 million. They’ve managed to score these hits without traditional television advertising, making it all the more impressive and surprising those who expected the weekend to belong to a movie where a long-hoped-for James Bond fights giant animals.

(Via Deadline)

Earlier this weekend, rapper Quando Rondo was reported to have been shot. A member of Rondo’s team later released a statement saying that Rondo was involved in a shooting, however, was not shot himself, noting, “Quando was involved in a shooting yesterday evening [Friday] which resulted in the untimely death of another’s young man’s life; he himself didn’t sustain any injuries during the shooting and is safe.”

According to Fox 11 News, investigators have since concluded that the three prime suspects of the shooting intended to shoot Rondo.

“A wild scene here as investigators say the apparent target of this deadly gunfire, a rapper of from the Atlanta area — they say a pretty well-known rapper, too — in this area along with a second person in this back Cadillac Escalade — may have been a relative, may have been a member of his entourage — we don’t know,” said reporter Ed Laskos. “But it’s that second person, not the rapper, it’s that second person who was hit by gunfire, dies by the gunfire.”

The victim of the shooting was treated by paramedics and taken to a local hospital. He was later pronounced dead.

At the time of reporting, the 22-year-old suspect Timothy Leeks — also known as Lul Tim — has been arrested.

Quando Rondo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s been a rollercoaster summer, but one of the most delightful running gags of the season has been the repeated humiliation of congressional candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz. The former TV star wants so badly to fill a vacating Senate seat in Pennsylvania he even moved from Jersey. Unfortunately, he’s running against John Fetterman, who’s spent the last few months mercilessly, creatively trolling his opponent. But sometimes all Fetterman has to do is wait for others to dig up some dirt then do the pouncing.

Over the weekend, people dug up some old tweets Oz made when he was a television health adviser of dubious credibility. These were about poop. They might even be helpful; one’s leavings are a good sign of how healthy one is (or isn’t). Trouble is, at least one tweet, from 2013, featured a generic link to his website…which is now all about his troubled senatorial campaign. Which means that it now reads weird.

Fetterman was quick to turn the gaffe into yet another of his Oz burns.

Turns out there are lots and lots and lots of Oz tweets on the subject of feces.

Poop-gate comes mere days after Oz was dragged about a bizarre video he recorded back in April, in which he tried to connect with salt-of-the-earth Pennsylvania voters by gathering ingredients for a deeply strange version of “crudité.” (That’s “vegetable tray” to everyone else.) The mockery was so bad even Tucker Carlson couldn’t help laughing about it. Meanwhile, Oz’s most high profile cheerleader, Donald Trump, sure isn’t laughing about how badly he may lose.

(Via The New York Post)

HBO has revealed another trailer for its upcoming series, The Idol. The series will tell the story of “a self-help guru and leader of a modern-day cult, who develops a complicated relationship with an up-and-coming pop idol,” according to a statement.

In the latest trailer, which says the series is spawned from “the gutters of Hollywood,” Lily Rose Depp seemingly appears as a pop star named Jocelyn, as she storms through a record label office, exercises in her mansion, parties in a club, and

The trailer teases appearances from several musicians, including The Weeknd, Moses Sumney, Jennie Ruby Jane of Blackpink, Troye Sivan, Ramsey, and producer Mike Dean. Actors Dan Levy, Hank Azaria, Suzanna Son, Jane Adams, and Rachel Sennott, also appear in the trailer.

The Idol is the newest project from Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, who is developing the show alongside The Weeknd.

Britney Spears is also rumored to have a part in the upcoming series, as she posted a picture of herself, The Weeknd, and Levinson on set earlier this year.

As of now, there is no confirmed premiere date for The Idol, but according to the trailer, we can expect it soon.

Check out the latest trailer above.

Joe Manchin’s a big hero of the Democratic party right now, but only because for a long time he wasn’t. He may have helped get a light version of President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” passed through Congress. But for ages, the West Virginia senator has been one of the thorns in his party’s side, being one of the only lawmakers holding up legislation that could help turn Biden’s agenda into a reality. The other is Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, and together the two have been seen as a kind of anti-dynamic duo. But now that one of them has flip-flopped and helped their own party, the pair seem to be at odds.

As per NBC News, Manchin threw some shade Sinema’s way during a roundtable in his home state. He was talking about the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act, the most sweeping legislation passed during the Biden era. Among other benefits, it allows Medicare for the first time to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies. Still, the bill could have been even better, and there was someone, he said, who put the kibosh on that.

“We had a senator from Arizona who basically didn’t let us go as far as we needed to go with our negotiations and made us wait two years,” Manchin said in a video of the event that was viewed by NBC News. “Those type of things — I don’t question anybody, everyone’s responding to their own constituent base. But we did get something. And it’s the first time we made a positive move in that.”

And which Arizona senator was this? It couldn’t be Mark Kelly, a Democrat who was always a bully for the bill. That leaves Sinema, who predictably kept her decision on how she would vote on the bill in the dark until the last minute. (She quietly voted yes.) Whereas Manchin is enjoying newfound love from Democrats — a big 180 from only a few weeks prior — Sinema’s popularity remains in the gutter.

(Via NBC News)

Perhaps no franchise in gaming has been in more dire need of a reboot than Madden. EA Sports’ premier title is the most consistent part of the gaming calendar, with a guaranteed August release every single year, but with that consistency has become a noticeable drop in quality. Fans have grown tired of every year being a slog of annoying (albeit very funny) glitches, the lack of major updates to modes like Franchise, and almost all emphasis going to Ultimate Team or timed events in The Yard.

So, is Madden NFL 23 that much-needed reboot? No, but it’s a necessary step in the right direction that the franchise desperately needed. Madden NFL 23 still has many of the same issues that may just be attributed to how difficult it is to make a yearly sports game, but those problems are far more tolerable when the actual act of playing simulation football works. This is not the best sports game out there — it’s not even the best sports game produced by EA — but it has done something that many fans felt was never gonna happen again: It made playing Madden fun again.

Here, we reviewed three elements of the game on PlayStation 5 to give you a sense of what you can expect if you pick up Madden NFL 23 for your console.

FieldSENSE

There’s no need to get into the details of what FieldSENSE is, because it’s been advertised everywhere, but it is what’s changed everything about this year’s game. The biggest issue of Madden for years has been that it just wasn’t very fun to play anymore. Running the ball felt stiff, passes didn’t go where you wanted them, defenses were either pathetically weak or extremely overpowered, and none of it looked realistic, either.

With the addition of FieldSENSE, players have a level of control they haven’t had previously. The ability to control cuts, put the ball exactly where you want it, or go lay in an extra hit on a running back to force a fumble all feel great. Player animations still have moments where they don’t look natural, and more than a few times, I’ve seen players bounce around on the ground like a pinball, but none of this impedes the gameplay experience. By focusing on delivering a fun gameplay experience first, we’re able to overlook odd moments because they’re not usually happening while playing the game.

This level of control Madden NFL 23 gives gamers has led to a bit of a learning curve for some. The first game you’re going to play is the John Madden Legacy game, and you’re going to find that the A.I. is coming for blood this time around. You can pinpoint the ball exactly where you want it now, and if you don’t make the right reads, elite players will pick you off easily. Running is harder than ever before against strong defenses, and lower tier wide receivers are going to struggle to get open. This does create the awesome feeling that, yes, Patrick Mahomes should be better than Nathan Peterman, but if you’re using lower overall teams, don’t be surprised when you get randomly get rolled.

Franchise

For years, fans have been told that Franchise mode is going to get a much-needed change and finally deliver the experience that made many people fall in love with it in the first place. While they haven’t fully delivered, it did finally get the face lift many have been begging for. A lot of the familiar is still here: player dev traits, key in-season moments, skill trees for coaches, and bonuses if you perform certain actions. It’s up to the player to decide how deep they want to get into all of this. They can either micromanage every single trait and upgrade while running each practice themselves, or they can focus on playing only the games. Typical stuff.

The big changes come in how you approach free agency and the addition of player tags to the game. Players are no longer focused solely on money to decide which team they want to join. Money is now a factor that can certainly influence why a player may sign somewhere, but it’s not the end all, be all. Players now receive tags that will influence their market value, decision-making, and if they ultimately want to re-sign with your team or not. Some players prefer to play in warm weather states, others want to go sign with a contender, and some want to go play for their hometown squad. These tags will also be applied in other ways, such as rookies who crack the starting lineup receiving the “day one starter” tag.

Franchise is far from fixed, and we want to continue seeing steps to improve it, but these new additions have improved it. The major downside is that you can still break it and turn a team into a super dynasty with relative ease. Tags let you sign players for deals below their market value, and in-season moments can turn decent players into superstars with only one or two good performances. Suddenly, you have a team of Pro Bowlers six weeks into the season and you’re re-signing all of them easily. So obviously balance is an issue, but the additions are largely good and we’re happy to see them be improved on in the future.

Face of the Franchise

For a little while, Face of the Franchise was the new emphasis for Madden. It had a story involving your player’s journey to the NFL, and most of them were either okay or bad. This year, the narrative has been dramatically reduced. There’s no Heartbreak Kids moment or forced awkward dialogue between you and a friend. Instead, it just gets you right into the action. The “narrative” this go around is that you’re coming off your first four years in the NFL and are only receiving one year prove-it deal offers from every single team across the league. So you — as your quarterback, running back, wide receiver, linebacker, or cornerback of choice — gets to choose where you want to go and do exactly that.

Cut scenes are no longer forced narrative moments, but are instead a part of your weekly menu that you receive as a player for whatever team you choose. They’re still not great, but it’s much more tolerable when they’re short, out-of-the-way moments instead of these overly dramatic lengthy scenes that are stopping you from getting to play the video game. The best part of this year’s Face of the Franchise mode is it wastes no time getting you on the field, a gigantic plus for everyone who was tired of the corny narrative arcs from previous games.

As for the gameplay itself, it’s the same as the rest of the game, you’re just now locked into a single position, so keep that in mind when you make a position choice. Unfortunately, QB is still far and away the most fun position to play, but it at least gives the player a little bit of variety on repeat playthroughs, or when they’re creating characters for The Yard.

Madden NFL 23 is not a perfect video game, but it’s the first positive steps the franchise has taken in years. Obviously, there are issues, as there always will be, but it’s nice to turn off my PlayStation 5 and feel like I had fun playing for once.

A copy of Madden NFL 23 for the PlayStation 5 was given to Uproxx for review purposes.