Category: News

At the beginning of the month, Cardi B unveiled the track “Hot Sh*t” with Lil Durk and Kanye West, and not without some teasing beforehand. Today, the music video is out, picturing Cardi dancing on the top of a city and strolling up and down the buildings in a revealing latex outfit.

This video was not released without any struggles. The rapper expressed issues in an interview the other day. “Oh my goodness, I don’t want to talk about the video because this video has brought me so much drama,” she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “So this is the first time I ever do CGI. I’m very particular on how I like my things, and I really like when things look super realistic. I like building sets, or I like to be in a place.” She added, “I couldn’t maneuver or move how I wanted to, because I was very confused. After I finished the video, I find out that this sh*t takes so long.” The wait has been worthwhile, and the CGI is quite impressive.

Watch the video for “Hot Sh*t” above.

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Chicago Bulls guard Lonzo Ball missed the end of last season after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery in late January. He was unable to return for the playoffs and had issues ramping back up to return.

According to Bulls executive vice president Artūras Karnišovas, it’s still unclear when Ball will return. Speaking on an NBA TV broadcast during a Bulls summer league game, Karnišovas said Ball is “progressing,” but didn’t any specific update.

“He’s progressing. That’s as much as I can say. He’s getting better. Probably not at the speed that we would like. But he’s getting better,” Karnišovas said, via K.C. Johnson of NBC Chicago. “Hopefully, he’s going to be ready for training camp. That’s just our hopes.”

Johnson reports that Ball has dealt with occasional discomfort whenever he ramps up his workload, which is why what was initially a 6-8 week diagnosis last January remains a mystery going into the middle of the summer. Ball’s status looms large as Chicago looks ahead to next season with hopes of building on a sixth-place finish in the East. He’s a key player as a bigger combo guard who can help cover defensively for Demar DeRozan and Zach LaVine, while providing secondary playmaking and off-ball shooting. They don’t have the same ceiling if he’s not right, particularly on defense.

Ball is also only 24 years old. He should be a player still growing and approaching his prime years, which is why the Bulls made a splash to acquire him in a sign-and-trade and sign him to a four-year, $80 million deal. If this knee isn’t fully right now, it casts doubt over that future and what he can bring to the team. Two of Chicago’s offseason moves — signing Goran Dragic and drafting Dalen Terry — certainly seem to indicate that the Bulls are preparing for a world where Ball isn’t ready to start the season.

Less than three months ago, Milwaukee Bucks standout forward Khris Middleton suffered an MCL sprain that ended his season. With Middleton unavailable, the Bucks were unable to defeat the eventual Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics but, if not for that injury, it is at least plausible that Giannis Antetokounmpo and company would have made a return trip to the NBA Finals. Now, Middleton will reportedly be recovering from a different injury over the summer, as ESPN’s Tim Bontemps and Adrian Wojnarowski report the three-time NBA All-Star recently underwent wrist surgery.

Notably, Middleton’s wrist injury is on his non-shooting arm, which is at least slightly preferable. However, the wording is interesting in that Middleton’s projected return is noted as “sometime near the start of the regular season,” rather than in advance of training camp. Beyond that, the Bucks have every reason to be careful with Middleton, both because he is a key piece of their team and also because Milwaukee undoubtedly plans to make a deep playoff run again in 2023.

Middleton, who is now 30 years old, averaged 20.1 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 5.4 assists per game for Milwaukee last season. While Antetokounmpo is the team’s clear No. 1 option on offense, Middleton often takes on an incredibly important role as a shot creator, particularly in difficult situations, and he is also a solid defender on the wing. If his absence continues into the season, the Bucks will likely turn to Grayson Allen, Wes Matthews, and Pat Connaughton for more minutes, particularly as newly-signed wing Joe Ingles is also recovering from a long-term injury.

Whereas some musicians were not too worried about being associated with the Capitol riots that took place on January 6 of last year, others don’t even want to be mentioned in the same sentence. This is especially true of the punk band Descendents.

As it happens, a Descendents t-shirt was worn by one of the rioters, Jason Van Tatenhove, during a hearing. He is known as the former spokesman for the far-right extremist group the Oath Keepers. The band took to Twitter to share their opinion of the situation, writing, “We completely disavow groups like the Oath Keepers and in no way condone their hateful ideology.”

People on Twitter were quick to call out the hypocrisy of being both a Descendents fan and a far-right extremist: “Tell me this Trump supporting rioter who is about to testify to the Jan 6th committee is not wearing a @descendents shirt. There is nothing further from punk rock than a right wing nationalist supporting a billionaire elitist politician. Poser,” one user wrote.

While testifying, Tatenhove said about the Oath Keepers, “They may not like to call themselves a militia, but they are, they’re a violent militia. In my opinion, the Oath Keepers are a very dangerous organization.”

Donald Trump has a lot to worry about right now, from the ongoing Jan. 6 hearings to the testimony he has to deliver under oath to the New York State attorney general’s office. Maybe that’s why he’s blowing off some steam by getting into it with Elon Musk. The latter is likely about to go to court over backing out of his deal with Twitter, and Trump has been needling him relentlessly over it.

Trump stepped up the beef even more on Tuesday, a day after Musk said he should “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset” — an odd mixing of cowboy and sailor angles. Trump took to his rinky dink Twitter clone with a thread, repeating some of what he said about him at a rally on Saturday but also expanding upon his taunts.

“When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects,” Trump wrote, “whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, “drop to your knees and beg,” and he would have done it…”

He then dragged him for buying what he sees as an inferior social media service (that he definitely misses like crazy). “Now Elon should focus on getting himself out of the Twitter mess because he could owe $44 billion for something that’s perhaps worthless,” he wrote, adding, “Also, lots of competition for electric cars!”

He had one addendum: “P.S., Why was Elon allowed to break the $15 million stock purchase barrier on Twitter without any reporting? That is a very serious breach! Have fun Elon and @jack, go to it!”

Musk wound up briefly responding to Trump’s taunts on the very service that permanently banned Trump.

Anyway, it’s been another exhausting bit of fighting from two of the worst ever hosts of SNL.

On their first three albums, Beacon presented unique and beautiful songs that merged Thomas Mullarney III’s soft vocals and gorgeous piano playing with his and Jacob Gossett’s synths and production. The result has always been music that merges classical techniques, electronica, and a touch of futuristic chamber pop sensibilities. Songs like 2018’s defining “Marion” tug at the heartstrings with a rhythmic dark, dance floor pulse.

The duo have just announced their fourth album, Along The Lethe, out on September 9th. It’s the first release on their own Apparent Movement imprint, after releasing their previous records through the Ghostly International label. “Lethe” refers to one of the five rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology, where the dead’s memories of their waking lives were erased when they drank from it. It speaks to the creation of the new album happening mostly during quarantine and how deeply affected the duo were by the circumstances. “I was haunted by this feeling of history intruding on our reality as lockdown descended on NYC,” Mullarney III said in a statement.

Today, Beacon have released two new singles in “Can’t Turn Back,” and “Ostrich,” the latter features saxophonist Colin Stetson, a noted, frequent Arcade Fire collaborator. While the two songs are disparate in nature, it showcases the different poles that Beacon turn to when making music. “Ostrich” is inspired by a tuning technique used by The Velvet Underground, where all of the instruments — from Mullarney III’s piano to Stetson’s horns and woodwinds — are tuned to the same note. Beacon then swirl everything into sonic oblivion with synths. Meanwhile, “Can’t Turn Back” feels like a page out of classic Beacon cuts. With nods to UK garage and downtempo drum and bass, it’s the type of tune you vibe to in a club, and also come down to at the afterparty.

Listen to “Can’t Turn Back” and “Ostrich” above. Check out the album artwork and tracklist for Along The Lethe below as well as Beacon’s upcoming North America and UK tour dates.

1. “Until Next Time”
2. “Oranges”
3. “Pay My Debts”
4. “I’m The Answer”
5. “Can’t Turn Back”
6. “Ostrich” (feat. Colin Stetson)
7. “Nova”
8. “Show Me How”
9. “Harm”
10. “Mile A Minute” (feat. Matthew Dear)

09/10 — Brooklyn, NY @ Public Records
09/13 — Boston, MA @ Middle East
09/14 — Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5
09/25 — Chicago, IL @ Schubas
10/06 — Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz
10/15 — Portland, OR @ Holocene
10/23 — Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
11/15 — Haarlem, Netherlands @ Patronaat
11/17 — Budapest, Hungary @ Turbina
11/18 — Glasgow, UK @ The Hug & Pint
11/19 — Manchester, UK @ YES
11/20 — London, UK, @ Nells

Along The Lethe is out on 09/09 via Apparent Movement. Pre-order it here.

Tuesday’s edition of the Jan. 6 hearings wasn’t an explosive powder keg like the one where former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson claimed Donald Trump, among other things, tried to choke a Secret Service agent. But it had its moments. In fact, it ended with a mic drop for the ages, with committee vice chair Liz Cheney revealing Trump tried to engage in some possible witness tampering.

“After our last hearing. President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation — a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” Cheney said at the end of the hearing. “That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice.”

She added, “We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.”

One would think Trump, of all people, would know not to contact witnesses.

The latest hearing for the House select committee also featured some more Rudy Giuliani nonsense, as well as a leftfield cameo from a Queer Eye set, seen in the Zoom background of an attorney for the far right militia group the Oath Keepers — the first and perhaps final time those two entities ever crisscross.

(Via CNBC)

Last month, Fred Again released the danceable anthem “Jungle” after teasing it for a few weeks during slots at festivals, including Coachella. Now, he’s teamed up with Rico Nasty for a chaotic, disruptive remix. The track has been totally transformed; the rapper’s vocals add a new layer of intensity that makes the beat drop even bigger. At three-and-a-half minutes, it’s the perfect song to dance to at the club.

Both of the artists have been pretty busy. Rico Nasty also dropped a new song of her own today called “Sunflower.” “Everyone hates the new song but eye love it,” Nasty wrote in a tweet, “and besides when was I ever gonna have a SUNFLOWER FIELD LIKE THAT AND A SONG CALLED SKULLFLOWER AT THE SAME TIME.” She later followed up, noting that she is no longer making music to appeal to the masses, writing, “Im not tryna go number one. Im just making music that I like again. If you don’t get it. Then don’t. Im not about to waste my entire career pleasing people, that’s not what I’m here for. I hope you respect that.”

Listen to the Rico Nasty remix of Fred Again’s “Jungle” above.

Fred Again is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

John Bolton has been a fixture of every Republican president going back to Reagan, but he only has open contempt for one: Donald Trump. The on-again-off-again administration figure and noted war hawk has been loud and clear about how dumb he thought his last White House boss was. Even when Bolton went on CNN to claim he wasn’t actually trying to plan a coup in his last months in office, he did so backhandedly — and while casually making a pretty alarming confession about himself.

Bolton was speaking to Jake Tapper about the ongoing, pretty weird Jan. 6 hearings, and he disagreed that what he was doing was a “carefully planned coup d’état,” which he admitted take “a lot of work.”

“That’s not the way Donald Trump does things,” Bolton told Tapper. “It’s rambling from one half-assed idea to another. One plan that falls through and another comes up. That’s what he was doing. As I say, none of it is defensible. But you have to understand the nature of what the problem of Donald Trump is.”

Tapper pointed out that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”

“I disagree with that,” Bolton replied. “As somebody who has helped plan coup d’état — not here, but other places — it takes a lot of work. And that’s not what he did. It was just stumbling around from one idea to another.”

Did Bolton just admit on a live news show that he helped plan a coup? He sure did. Tapper circled back to that admission soon after, but when asked which coups he helped plan, Bolton replied with a laugh, “I’m not going to get into the specifics.”

But when asked if he’d played a part in any “successful coups,” Bolton did point to his latest memoir, which contained passages on one in Venezuela he said “turned out not to be successful.”

He added, “Not that we had all that much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try to overturn an illegally elected president. And they failed. The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable.”

Tapper told him, “I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me.”

“I’m sure there is,” he replied.

Bolton did allow that Trump was responsible for what happened on Jan. 6. “Ultimately, he did unleash the rioters at the Capitol, as to that, there’s no doubt,” he told Tapper. “But not overthrow the Constitution, to buy more time to throw the matter back to the states to try to redo the issue. And if you don’t believe that, you’re going to overreact.”

Bolton’s hatred of Trump is fully reciprocated. One of the many Trump tell-alls claimed he hoped his former national security adviser would catch COVID and die.

(Via The Daily Beast)

The Jan. 6 hearings were back on Tuesday, with a session devoted to further evidence that there was no proof for Trump’s voter fraud lies, as well as extensive looks at the direct connections between his administration and far right extremist groups. It was yet another colorful afternoon on Capitol Hill, complete with still more Rudy Giuliani nonsense. But perhaps the strangest moment came from someone else.

As per Curbed, one of the pre-taped testimonies presented during the hearing came from Kellye SoRelle, a general counsel to the militia group the Oath Keepers. A volunteer for Lawyers for Trump, she claimed that when it came to the Stop the Steal rallies that preceded the Capitol riot, the conspiracy theorists Ali Alexander and Alex Jones “became, like, the center point for everything.”

That’s all well and good and useful intel that should help bolster the House select committee’s case. However, it was easy to be at least mildly distracted by what was behind SoRelle on her Zoom screen: a lovely kitchen festooned with leather barstools, white marble counters, and an island. In fact, Crooked Media’s Erin Ryan thought it looked a mite familiar.

As Ryan pointed out, it was indeed a green screen Zoom background, its image lifted from the third season of Queer Eye. It was the gang’s home base that season, and it was designed by Bobby Berk with goods from West Elm. The photograph comes courtesy of Landon Vonderschmidt.

The Trump gang is a weird one, and these hearings have been alternately (or even simultaneously) shocking and surreal. In a sense, seeing some Queer Eye pop up in hearings concerning people, many of whom are for the gutting of LGBTQIA+ rights, shouldn’t be that surprising. And they still (maybe) have Steve Bannon to deal with.

(Via Curbed)