Category: News

The soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming Elvis biopic continues to show off its unexpected eclecticism with another new song from Diplo and Swae Lee titled “Tupelo Shuffle.” The song also features Gary Clark Jr. and the film’s star Austin Butler and is built atop an interpolation of Elvis Presley’s 1954 cover of Arthur Crudup’s 1946 blues hit, “That’s All Right Mama” (Clark plays Crudup in the film). The upbeat, bluesy sample is different from anything we’ve ever heard from either Swae Lee or Diplo and evokes the loose-limbed energy of a juke joint at its highest spirits.

It’s a prime example of the kind of reinterpretations of the Elvis hits and deep cuts found elsewhere on the soundtrack. The previously released Doja Cat single, “Vegas,” likewise uses an interpolation of Elvis’ 1956 rendition of Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” to dismiss a wannabe lover. Meanwhile, the soundtrack is also set to feature such eyebrow-raising additions as Denzel Curry, Eminem, Jack White, Kacey Musgraves, Maneskin, Nardo Wick, Stevie Nicks, and Tame Impala.

While the soundtrack selection is a big look for Swae Lee — who’s become somewhat of a go-to for these things (see: Into The Spider-Verse and its smash single “Sunflower” or Shang-Chi‘s “In The Dark” with Jhene Aiko) — he’s apparently looking forward to getting back to his old Rae Sremmurd shenanigans with brother Slim Jxmmi for Sremm4Life soon.

Listen to “Tupelo Shuffle” above.

Two of rap’s fastest-rising women link up for a fiery collaboration on Lakeyah‘s “Mind Yo Business” featuring Latto. The two former XXL Freshmen (Latto was selected for the honor in 2020, when she was still Mulatto, while Lakeyah was picked last year) are among hip-hop’s most dedicated straight-up rappers, so it only makes sense that they’d team up — and that their collab would work so well.

The Atlanta native and the Atlanta transplant (by way of Milwaukee) display some aggressive chemistry on the fast-paced track, which finds them boasting their big-money moves while warning haters not to stick their noses where they don’t belong. In the song’s video, the two women lounge among the shrubbery in a well-manicured garden while the thirsty gardeners try to catch a glimpse of their greatness from behind the hedges.

Lakeyah, who is signed to Quality Control Music, told Uproxx in a 2020 interview that she plans to be “the biggest artist in the world,” and with the help of Latto — already a burgeoning a superstar in her own right — she appears well on her way. If this is the beginning of a rollout for Lakeyah’s debut album, she’s off to a strong start.

Watch Lakeyah’s “Mind Yo Business” video featuring Latto above.

070 Shake’s has been rolling out her new album You Can’t Kill Me — the follow up 2020’s phenomenal Modus Vivendi — for a bit now. She released the promising singles “Web,” “Skin & Bones,” and the collaboration with Christine And The Queens for “Body.” Today, the record is finally out, and along with it she has unveiled a music video for her hypnotic, haunting song “Medicine.”

“We’re so attached to this physical world, it makes us more susceptible to being hurt,” 070 Shake said in a statement. “You can’t kill me because I’m more than my body. With each album, it’s like you’re being revealed more and more. You Can’t Kill Me shows how dedicated I am to being free within music… Feeling is the biggest ingredient of my music.”

She’s finishing up her headline North American tour next week with four nights in Los Angeles; it’s already a big year for her, but it’s going to get even bigger. She’s also famously dating Kehlani, who shared a tender depiction of their relationship in the recent music video for their song “Melt.”

Watch the video for “Medicine” above.

Christine And The Queens and Kehlani are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Boston Celtics stole homecourt advantage away from the Golden State Warriors in Game 1 of the 2022 NBA Finals. Thanks to a sensational team performance in the fourth quarter, Boston picked up a 120-108 win at Chase Center on Thursday night and find themselves three wins away from lifting the Larry O’Brien trophy.

Despite the loss, Draymond Green struck an optimistic tone in his postgame press conference, expressing his belief that the Warriors will end up being “fine” as the series goes on. This, unsurprisingly, drew the ire of noted guy who isn’t an especially big Draymond fan, Kendrick Perkins, who appeared on NBC Sports Boston after the game and said Green was lying.

“That was a whole lot of lying for the simple fact that, oh, ‘we’ll be fine,’ no you won’t!” Perkins said. “No you won’t. Listen, Payton Pritchard played eight minutes in that fourth quarter, meaningful minutes. Jaylen Brown did his thing. The bench came in and gave a huge lift. The Warriors scored 16 points in the fourth quarter. Sixteen! That ain’t just happen because they were missing shots — no, the Celtics were getting to them, they couldn’t get the ball off, they couldn’t get they shot off.”

After some prodding by Brian Scalabrine and Eddie House, Perkins went on to say that the Celtics “were on their ass like diapers on a baby.” Perkins, of course, won a ring with Boston in 2008, and in recent weeks, a bit of a feud has popped up between himself and Green. He continued his bit on Friday morning when he appeared on First Take dressed like an inmate as a way to say the Celtics put the “handcuffs” on the Warriors in the fourth quarter.

We’ll see if Golden State will be fine or if Perkins is right that they have some serious problems they need to deal with when Game 2 tips off on Sunday.

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 — Please give me a show about Mitch

Something incredible happened on Barry this week. No, not the chase scene, although that was incredible too, with dirtbike crashing and used car dealership shootouts and Bill Hader humming little songs. And not the thing where Stephen Root’s character said the phrase “I’m working on it, amigo” in exactly the voice you can hear him saying it in your head right now, although that was also incredible and I can’t wait to text the screencap to my editor the next time he asks about the status of a piece I promised him 48 hours earlier. No, I’m talking about a new character.

Maybe my favorite character on the show now.

I’m talking about Mitch the Beignet guy.

Mitch appeared three times in the episode to deliver delicious pastries and shockingly good life advice to characters on the show. Those screencaps up there are from when he was telling Sally to follow her dreams. The delivery of all of it was incredible, just a deeply stoned guy saying profound and useful things to strangers all day long. Mitch is wonderful. GQ interviewed the actor who played him, Tom Allen, and I am pleased to report it is everything I hoped it would be.

Mitch is played by Tom Allen, a Los Angeles-based actor who says he tends to gravitate towards “childlike, naive, surfer-bro kind of roles.” Even so, Mitch was special. “I love the character so much,” he said. “He cares about people, and he’s achieving what he set out to do. He’s living his dream. So he’s a very aspirational character to me.”

YES.

MORE.

Do you relate to Mitch at all?

I was a philosophy major. And in high school I was called “the most disheveled kid in school.” Everyone thought I was the biggest stoner, I think I just have that aura about me. Everyone’s like, “Oh my God, that guy is so high all the time.” But I actually don’t smoke weed. I think I just naturally have that kind of energy about me. I’m very into abstract thinking with philosophy and giving advice to people.

Perfect. Beautiful. I love every aspect of it and every tangentially related aspect of those original aspects. Here he is giving spot-on relationship advice to my beloved NoHo Hank moments before — after knowing him for all of about 90 seconds and correctly identifying him as “rad” — asking him to run a beignet franchise location.

I… kind of want this. I want Hank and Mitch to become millionaire beignets magnates. I would absolutely watch this show. I would recap it weekly. I need to stress here that nothing I’ve typed in this paragraph is a joke. Funny? Maybe. But not a joke.

And these aren’t even the best Mitch moment. That honor goes to his conversation with Barry later in the episode, when Barry was on the way to an in-person meeting with some people he knew from his military days. Mitch heard this plan and gave this response…

… which, dancing around spoilers if you haven’t seen it yet, proved to be good advice. Mitch is the greatest. I know it’s probably better for the show to use him in tiny doses here and there. I know Bill Hader knows what he’s doing and has things under control. I just… I love him. I know I already said that. I can’t help it. He’s another perfect character on a show filled with them. I didn’t even mention Vanessa Bayer popping up as an executive for a streaming service and basically mailing a perfect little comedy sketch smack in the middle of all of it. Barry is a good show. We all know this but it’s worth saying again. So… I just did it.

Great job by all of us.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — I am pleased to report that the squelching has continued

Stranger Things is back. I suspect you are aware of this. It’s been a whole thing. The fourth go-round of the teen horror/adventure show has been so popular that it sent a song from the mid-1980s rocketing back up to the top of the pop music charts, which is kind of cool, except for the thing where that song is not “Tell It To My Heart” by Taylor Dayne, which I heard in a store a few weeks ago and has been in my head ever since. No offense to Kate Bush. She’s cool, too. But it would be fun if we take Taylor Dayne to number one next.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that the squelching has returned. Perhaps you remember the squelching. There was so much of it in the third season, which you would know if you read this thing I wrote or took the advice from this other thing I wrote. Stranger Things loves to describe sounds with the word “squelch” or “squelching.” There’s one example at the top of this section. And if you were worried the show had moved on from the squelching, if you feared they had found a new word to describe gross sounds made by various oozes and slimes and goos, well… they went and cleared that up right there in the first episode.

Twice. They did it twice in the first episode. Look.

There are two main takeaways from all of this, which I will now present, to you, for free, although you may send me money if you like:

• No show in history is as committed to squelching as Stranger Things
• I really did not need them to add the “wet” to any of this, and wish they had not, because “wet squelch” is a deeply unsettling phrase

This has been your squelching update.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Sam Richardson is the best

All Sam Richardson ever does is appear in cool stuff and make it a little better. He stole scenes on Veep as Richard Splett, which is an incredible accomplishment when you look at the people he was stealing them from. He was awesome in Detroiters, a show I loved and screencapped above and am mad at all of you for not watching. He kills every sketch he’s in on I Think You Should Leave, he carried huge chunks of The Afterparty, etc etc etc. He’s the best. Part of me wants him to become the biggest star in the world and part of me just wants him to keep making this cool little stuff I like. It’s a real dilemma. For me.

This brings us to the interview he did with the New Yorker this week. It’s great. He’s a smart and interesting guy and at one point he says comedy is a little bit like jazz, which made me do the full-on DiCaprio Pointing meme at my computer because it reminded me of the Crashmore sketch from ITYSL. The whole thing was a real cosmic gumbo. Again, for me.

One section did jump out at me, though. This one, specifically.

In some ways, it feels like your career is moving along the track set down by people like Tina Fey, other alums from Second City. And yet you’re establishing your own direction maybe in part because you didn’t do the “S.N.L.” thing. Do you still have the role models that you had when you were in your late teens and twenties? Are you inventing as you’re going along?

There’s these people who are touchstones for what I want to achieve or where I want to be. I think of Tom Hanks.

You have been compared to—

I know, which makes me—it moves my mind every day. [Laughs.]

The Second City path was the path that I saw, like, I can achieve this. And then from there “S.N.L.” was a path. I was, like, All right, well, this is my goal. But I didn’t get that. The road diverges, infinitely.

Yes. Yes, let’s do this. Let’s make Sam Richardson the new Tom Hanks. A few good comedies, a few Oscars, a general vibe where everyone is like “oh, nice, I love that guy” whenever they see him. The whole thing. I think that would be cool. As long he as he keeps popping up in ITYSL sketches after he’s a mega-famous Oscar winner. These are my conditions.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — An important note about Top Gun: Maverick

I saw Top Gun: Maverick last weekend, like everybody else. It was great. It was unnecessary, mostly, and kind of funny how Tom Cruise was like “no, I will not be passing the torch to anyone else, I will instead steal a fighter jet and save the day myself once again,” but mostly it was just a blast. It was nice to see a big loud movie about planes going WHOOOOSH in a theater again.

About that: As regular readers know, I use a wheelchair as a result of a spinal cord injury like 15 years ago. This means a lot of things but, for our purposes here, it means that I sit in the section of the movie theater that is accessible for my chair. Which, at the theater I was at, was in the back, next to other people who need accessible seating, including one older dude who was wearing one of those navy blue USS SOMETHING hats with the stars on them. He talked to his wife throughout the whole movie. I loved him very much.

There’s a point in the movie — I’ll try not to spoil anything — where one character crashes and we see him on the ground for a while and don’t know if he’s dead or alive. This is where the old dude turned to his wife and said…

“Watch, he’s gonna open his eyes.”

And then when the character opened his eyes moments later…

“I could have written this movie.”

I am so happy movie theaters are back. I want to see every movie with this guy now. My only regret is that I should have asked him for his contact info. He and I could have started a podcast. I would be so rich.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — I will read any story about Prince

There’s this comedy roundtable over at The Hollywood Reporter this week. It’s fun. They got Jerrod Carmichael and Will Forte and Danny McBride and Bowen Yang and Michael Che and Jake Johnson to sit around and blabber about jokes. I enjoyed reading it a lot. There’s a little interaction about narcissism between Will Forte and Bowen Yang that made me laugh out loud at my laptop like a crazy person.

There is also a chunk of it where Jake Johnson talks about the time Prince appeared on New Girl. This is good because I really like both Jake Johnson and stories about Prince. Prince was one of the all-time Weird Dudes, which I say with love only. I would read an entire book of people just telling Prince stories. I would watch a documentary. I would watch a whole docuseries where every episode features actors and actresses acting out Prince stories, like a cross between Drunk History and the one Chappelle’s Show sketch. This is a good idea. Read this and tell me I’m wrong.

JOHNSON I did a scene in New Girl with Prince, and I get a lot of, “What was he like?”

CHE What was he like?

JOHNSON He was really weird. He had a whole group of people, they were all wearing purple and walked in a single-file line, and when they got to the place we were going, he was announced, “Prince is coming to set,” and everybody got tight, and then they all walked out. He was talking to Zooey Deschanel, and I was waiting for the moment where I say hi, and then he goes, “I’m ready to meet Nick now.” That was my character’s name, so Zooey was like, “This is Nick.”

CHE I miss Nick.

JOHNSON Then we did the scene, and he was a genuinely good actor. And then he didn’t get up. They were relighting, which is about 45 minutes, and if Prince doesn’t get up, I’m not getting up. I was like, “So, you a big [Minnesota] Vikings guy?” And he was. We talked NFC North, and it was unreal.

It is deeply upsetting to me to know that I will never have the chance to sit down with Prince and discuss professional sports. It hurts me in ways I cannot fully articulate. That docuseries I was talking about earlier would help. Please. I’ve been very good.

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 up.

From Dylan:

I’ve been thinking a lot about what they’re going to do with the Fast & Furious franchise after FAST11outof10Furiouses. Here’s my pitch: turn the franchise into an anthology film series, with incredibly different directors taking the helm for each individual installment.

Wes Anderson’s Fast & The Furious
Lars Von Trier’s Fast & Furious
David Cronenberg’s Fast & Furious
Chloe Zhao’s Fast & Furious
Seven Bucks Productions’ Fast & Furious

WERNER HERZOG’s Fast & Furious

Who are some directors you would want to see take over?

Dylan, this question is so good. As are the suggestions. I would pay something like $49.99 to see Werner Herzog’s take on the Fast universe. I would pay double for just the audio files of him and Vin Diesel discussing it. I’ll go higher if I have to.

I have two answers here, one serious and one kind of serious:

Steven Soderbergh — Yes, yes I would like to see how the guy responsible for the Ocean’s movies and Out of Sight and Logan Lucky would handle an international crew or street racers who are now unlicensed government agents and have done battle with both a renegade submarine and the laws of physics.

The Lonely Island — Consider: Popstar but for the Fast & Furious movies. There are songs now. Ludacris finally gets to rap in character. Jason Statham also raps. I am so happy I got to type that last sentence.

There are others but let’s start here.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Paris!

Luke Sundberg and three of his friends were in line inside the Louvre in Paris on Sunday, waiting to pose for a photo in front of the Mona Lisa, when they heard gasps.

A man dressed as a woman had sprung from a wheelchair and ducked under a rope barrier separating the painting from the crowd of about 100 people.

This is already the best story I’ve ever read.

The visitors watched in disbelief as he began pounding on the glass that shields the painting. Then, Mr. Sundberg said, the man smeared what appeared to be cake all over the glass protecting what is one of the world’s most recognizable pieces of art.

Sure.

I get it.

Whip some cake at the Mona Lisa.

We’ve all thought about it.

The Louvre said in a statement that officials with the museum had followed its usual procedures for people with reduced mobility, “allowing them to admire this major work of the Louvre.”

Once he was near the painting, the man threw the pastry that he had hidden, the museum said.

Okay, so there are two things I need to say here and both of them are important. The first is that you should not pretend to be disabled for the purpose of committing crimes, or for another reason, if only because it means people like me who are actually disabled are the ones who will face the consequences of it all down the road. Please consider this going forward.

The second thing is that I think you should be allowed to whip cake at famous works of art. They’re behind glass. It’ll be fine. Let people do it for an hour or two a week. Charge $100 admission and $20 for a piece of cake. Whip it at some piece of abstract art and see if anyone notices. Maybe it’ll end up improving it all a little bit. You don’t know.

The main thing I’m getting at here is that I should not be in charge of a museum.

Top Gun: Maverick has been both a critical and box office success, culminating in the biggest opening weekend of Tom Cruise’s career, and now, that cake is going to get some pretty impressive icing. According to a new report, the massive amount of interest in Top Gun: Maverick has propelled the original Top Gun to the top of the streaming charts where it surprisingly dominated Stranger Things 4 and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Both series were super expensive undertakings for Netflix and Disney+, respectively, but apparently, they just couldn’t compete with audiences’ interest seeing a very young Tom Cruise and his need for speed.

Via Variety:

Here’s the full top 10 from Reelgood for the week:

“Top Gun” (Paramount+, Prime Video)
“Obi-Wan Kenobi” (Disney+)
“Stranger Things” (Netflix)
“The Lost City” (Paramount+)
“The Lincoln Lawyer” (Netflix)
“Better Call Saul” (Netflix, AMC+)
“Sonic the Hedgehog 2” (Paramount+)
“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” (HBO Max)
“Night Sky” (Prime Video)
“Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” (Disney+)

Top Gun besting Stranger Things 4 is particularly notable given that series has been demolishing viewer records over at Netflix. (Top Gun was on the streaming platform until June 1 when it switched over to Amazon Prime.) It’s an interesting look into the opaque world of streaming. Stranger Things 4 is obviously doing great for Netflix and delivering a Game of Thrones-style epic, and yet, if these rankings are accurate, a 36-year-old movie swooped in thanks to the massive hype from its sequel. Now that’s a plot twist.

(Via Variety)

Rowdy Rebel has adjusted well to the new sound of Brooklyn drill despite his time away. Since being released from prison in 2020 after serving a six-year racketeering bid, the former(?) GS9 member has released a trickle of new music showing off his chops, despite some issues with his label. This year, he dropped a chest-beating freestyle over Lil Durk’s “Ah Haa” and the conflicted “Rowdy Vs. Rebel.” Today, he followed up with his latest foray into the modern drill scene, “Woo Nina.”

He certainly fits right in. It probably helps that not much has changed since the days when “Hot N****” and “Computers” ruled the streets. The lean, mean track clocks in at just over two minutes, and in the video, Rowdy is surrounded by residents of his home borough, who woo walk and wheelie motorbikes through the streets as Rowdy poses for pics and boasts his hood bona fides.

Despite dropping three new singles this year, Rowdy has yet to announce a new album. This likely stems from his previously stated issues with Epic Records, where he and Bobby Shmurda signed in 2014. Shmurda also complained about the label before buying out the remainder of his contract and going independent earlier this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rowdy did something similar to ensure he finally gets a release date.

Watch Rowdy Rebel’s “Woo Nina” video above.

Stranger Things 4 is the show’s most expansive season yet, with the action split between Indiana, Nevada, Russia, and California. The first three locations are essential to the plot, but — and this is one of the biggest questions and criticisms I’ve seen online about the new season — why did creators Matt and Ross Duffer, known professionally as the Duffer brothers, send Eleven, Joyce, Mike, Will, etc. to California, only to have them almost immediately flee the state? Basically, it’s the same reason Captain Marvel didn’t instantly destroy Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War? She was, uh, busy.

“I guess if there is a formula to Stranger Things, the idea of everyone kind of solving one piece of the puzzle and then joining forces together, that is not possible in the same way that it was before,” Matt told Variety. “So we love the idea of throwing that challenge at our characters, the idea that Eleven is so far away from Hawkins that she can’t swoop in like Superman in the same way she has before and save the day.”

Also, Eleven doesn’t have her powers (except for the power to smack bratty girls in the face with a roller skate).

Matt added that one of the reasons why Stranger Things leaned “much harder into horror movie territory” in season four is due to Eleven’s absence. “It’s so often that she’s able to come in and kind of rescue our characters and she isn’t there. And so they feel particularly vulnerable,” he explained. “They are exposed and vulnerable in a way that they haven’t been before as they move into this final fight with Vecna.”

Stranger Things returns for two very long episodes on July 1.

(Via Variety)

Things are looking solid for Johnny Depp at the moment: The actor is fresh off being awarded millions of dollars at the end of his defamation trial with Amber Heard. He was seemingly feeling good even before the verdict was handed down, as this past weekend, he joined Jeff Beck for a surprise appearance at his show in Sheffield, England.

After the trial, Depp once again popped up at a Beck concert, last night (June 2) in Gateshead, England. There, Beck revealed he and Depp have actually recorded an album together, which is apparently set for release in a matter of weeks.

Beck said, “I met this guy five years ago and we’ve never stopped laughing since. We actually made an album. I don’t know how it happened. It will be out in July.”

Depp, of course, has plenty of experience as a musician. He, Alice Cooper, and Joe Perry are members of the supergroup Hollywood Vampires, who released a self-titled debut album in 2015. Depp’s discography also includes appearances on songs by artists like Oasis, Marilyn Manson, Iggy Pop, and Aerosmith. He has also contributed to the soundtracks of some of his movies, with the musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street behind perhaps the most notable example.

There has been a lot of discussion about major labels in the wake of the Halsey controversy, in which they claimed that their label wouldn’t let them release a song until they had a viral TikTok moment first. In a recent interview with TMZ Live, rapper Russ, who never hesitates to share his beliefs, has weighed in with his opinion on major labels.

“I do think at some point [major labels] will become obsolete, just because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. You don’t need them; they’re not doing anything for you that you can’t do for yourself,” he said. “I just think that some artists are not very business-minded and they kinda just want to be the artist, so that’s why they go the label approach so that they have a team that does everything for them.”

He added: “But you can get a team to do everything for you and still just be the artist without the label. Artists in today’s day and age, they’re their own digital marketing. I think digital marketing is one of the biggest facades in the music industry. You get with the label and they’re like, ‘Here’s your digital team.’ And it’s like, ‘What do y’all do exactly?’”

Watch the interview below.