Category: News

Earlier this year, Lil Wayne expressed that he really, really wanted to play the Super Bowl Halftime Show for 2025, considering it would be on his home turf in New Orleans. A few days ago, though, it was revealed that it was Kendrick Lamar who was chosen for the coveted gig.

Days later, Wayne has spoken up, and he’s heartbroken.

Wayne shared a video this morning (September 13). In it, he appears downtrodden as he speaks, saying:

“First of all, I want to say forgive me for the delay. […] I had to get strength enough to do this without breaking.

I’m gonna say thank you to every voice, every opinion, all the care, all the love and the support out there. Your words turned into arms and held me up when I tried to fall back.

That hurt. It hurt a lot. You know what I’m talking about. It hurt a whole lot. I blame myself for not being mentally prepared for a letdown, and for automatically mentally putting myself in that position like somebody told me that was my position. So I blame myself for that. But I thought that was nothing better than that spot and that stage and that platform in my city, and so it hurt. It hurt a whole lot.

[But] y’all are f*cking amazing. It made me feel like sh*t, not getting this opportunity, and when I felt like sh*t, you guys reminded me that I ain’t sh*t without y’all… and that’s an amazing reality.

So, like I said, it broke me and I’m just trying to put me back together. But my God, have you all helped me. Thanks to all of my peers, my friends, my family, my homies on the sports television, and everybody repping me. I really appreciate that, I really do. I feel like I let all of y’all down by not getting that opportunity, but I’m working on me and I’m working. So, thank you.”

Watch the video here.

Jack Antonoff found himself in a bit of hot water at the 2024 MTV VMAs.

As TMZ notes, during Katy Perry’s performance, Antonoff was spotted putting noise-canceling earplugs in his ears. Footage made the rounds and Perry fans took to the internet to express their dissatisfaction with Antonoff’s perceived slight.

Antonoff saw what was going on and responded. In a tongue-in-cheek statement shared on X (formerly Twitter) and his Instagram Story yesterday (September 12), Antonoff explained:

“i would like to tell you directly from me that i did in fact use earplugs the other night. they were blue ‘hearos’ brand and im mortified to admit that i’ve been using them for a long time as well as buying them in bulk. i would also like to be honest and get ahead of that fact that i do not only use them when in 100 plus DB environments. it is humiliating to admit that i use them on planes and every night while sleep. there is nothing left to do but apologize and thank those who have covered this story because although it’s an embarrassment to my family and i, i do believe that this was a very important and pressing issue that needed to be exposed. i’m sorry to those i let down and today i will not being going to work and instead thinking about my earplug use and everyone that has been affected by it. the band and i have decided to keep all dates as scheduled.”

To Antonoff’s point: Per a 2016 paper from the Audio Engineering Society, the noise level at concerts typically ranges from 100 to 105 decibels; Some rock concerts have apparently even reached 130 decibels. The National Institute On Deafness And Other Communication Disorders, meanwhile, notes, “A single very loud noise or long or repeated exposure to sounds at or above 85 dBA can cause hearing loss.” So, Antonoff, a musician and producer who heavily relies on his hearing, took a simple step to protect his ears in a loud environment.

Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan will put his most well-known series to rest this fall, which is also the season when he will debut his next star-studded offshoot. Landman isn’t quite considered even Yellowstone-adjacent, yet the series will surely have the trademark touches of a Sheridan show. As always, this prolific screenwriter has penned another adventure that captures a quintessential part of the American essence, and co-star Jon Hamm has made it known that this is not a cowboy-focused show.

Of course, Landman is likely to include a fair amount of cowboy boots and hats like Tulsa King does (and Sylvester Stallone’s show will return on September 15 because this Paramount+ king does not rest), but in vastly different settings. Let’s round up what to expect on this show, starting with the cast:

Cast

Sometime in the future, somebody will attempt to pinpoint the most storied cast of any Taylor Sheridan series, and Landman will surely hit the top three. First, a certain 1883 actor flowed so well with the Yellowstone creator that Sheridan wrote the Tommy Norris role specifically for Billy Bob Thornton. He has portrayed unruly characters (Bad Santa) and written captivating characters of his own accord (Sling Blade) and won one of TV’s highest acting honors (Fargo), but here, Billy Bob will portray a unique but wholly American beast: a wheeling and dealing oil company crisis manager.

Additionally, every show is better with a dose of Michael Peña, who will portray “veteran roughneck” Armando Medina. Jon Hamm will star as oil-industry king Monty Miller (an ally of Tommy), and his wife, Cami, will be portrayed by Demi Moore, who’s having quite a year between her Sheridan debut and with The Substance. Additionally, Tommy’s private life will be under the microscope with his ex-wife portrayed by Ali Larter, who will very much be on the scene, as revealed in a Vanity Fair photo reveal. Their young adult children will be portrayed by Michelle Randolph and Jacob Lofland.

Other cast members include Andy Garcia and Paulina Chávez with locally-based extras for filming oil-field and college-campus scenes.

Plot

Landman is based upon the hit Boomtown podcast and arrives with a synopsis that sets the show “in the proverbial boomtowns of West Texas” as “a modern-day tale of fortune seeking in the world of oil rigs.” Further, this is an “upstairs/downstairs story of roughnecks and wildcat billionaires fueling a boom so big, it’s reshaping our climate, our economy and our geopolitics.”

Thornton recently told TV Insider that he and Sheridan had an early-on conversation about Norris’ feeling that he could have had everything in life, but due to various circumstances, that didn’t happen, and he’s very aware of the situation: “Taylor said to me one day, ‘When you go over to this house, and you think of where you live, you’re looking around, and you think: I could have had this – but it went a different direction.’”

Demi Moore further revealed to Deadline that the “boomtown of Fort Worth, Texas” will reveal “kind of this subculture that we haven’t seen before, which is what I think Taylor does so well.” Additionally, Moore promises that in addition to “really exploring the issues around oil, petroleum, on all sides,” there will be plenty of “delicious drama within and family dynamics.” Will there be an endangered ranch somewhere on the peripheral, too? Hopefully, there will be some Yellowstone Easter eggs in there somewhere.

We do know, however, that Billy Bob has something in common with Stallone, who described this filming experience as too hot to handle, temperature wise. In fact, Thornton admitted to Vanity Fair that certain scrubland scenes were “probably” the toughest type of filming that he’s ever physically done. The crew even nearly passed out on a day that Thornton had to run in 100 degree weather in high humidity while wearing cowboy boots on “caliche roads,” which does sound like hell on earth. That’s a day in the life of, according to Jon Hamm, “oil speculators and what they called landmen, which are the guys that run around and try to acquire mineral rights and land rights.”

Release Date

Hold onto your boots, this Paramount+ series will premiere on November 17.

Trailer

The first teaser trailer promises a gripping ride for Sheridan-heads.

Steven and Ian open today’s episode with some jokes (and some empathy!) directed at Dave Grohl. The president of rock is down this week, but the guys are not going to kick him. Steven then laments the state of the Green Bay Packers in a quick Sportscast, and the guys marvel at the unintentional comedy of Donald Trump in Politicscast. Steven gets really depressed during the Fantasy Albums Draft update, but then things perk up when they address the recent controversy about Linkin Park’s new singer and the overall “yay or nay” status of the popular nu-metal band. The guys also review new albums by “indie sleaze” artists The Dare and Fcukers, which brings out the “Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon” side of Steven.

In the mailbag, a listener asks if there is an American band whose reunion would engender as much hysteria as the Oasis reunion in England. (The answer is: Nirvana, maybe, if Kurt Cobain faked his own death.)

In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks up the new album by Foxing while Steven stumps for the latest live record by The War On Drugs.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 206 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

Poor Finneas. After falling down an elevator shaft in the video for his last single, “For Cryin’ Out Loud!,” his heart gets kicked in its ass in his new “Cleats” video. Obviously, he’s learned a lot from teenage heartbreak, as the overall tone of the song is upbeat and tongue-in-cheek. Finneas sings the lyrics as an address to his younger self with all the wisdom of the intervening years, knowing he was barking up the wrong tree all along — but everything’s obvious in hindsight.

Finneas plays a fly on the wall in the video as his teenaged self hangs out with a girl from the soccer team — honestly, bro, you did this to yourself — until he works up the courage to make a move. Naturally, he promptly goes down in flames, but like… the song is called “Cleats” for cryin’ out loud! (See what I did there?)

For Cryin’ Out Loud is also the name of the producer-songwriter’s upcoming album, on which he steps out of the “bedroom producer” mindset and works with a full band — which sounds like another step toward making that musical with his sister Billie the two have been brainstorming for a while.

You can watch the video for “Cleats” above.

For Cryin’ Out Loud! is out 10/4 via Interscope Records. Find more information here.

After becoming the music business’ go-to call for a hit single feature, the time is ripe for Playboi Carti to finally come through with his long-awaited, oft-delayed album, Music. In typical Carti fashion, the self-declared King Vamp hasn’t given fans much to go on, let alone a solid album release date, but he did offer hope in the form of a new single, “All Red.”

In addition to trading in the high-pitched, squeaky voice we’ve heard him employ on a number of releases for a deeper-voiced, Future-esque flow, “All Red” is also the first official release to streaming services Carti’s shared since 2020’s Whole Lotta Red. Like many of Carti’s tracks, it was first teased through snippets on social media, although he did perform the song in full during his headlining set at Lyrical Lemonade’s Summer Smash in Chicago in June.

Carti’s new flow pairs with his usual approach to wordplay, lending “All Red” a menacing, but playful vibe. It’s certainly a good sign for Music that Carti appears to be fully motivated and actually dropping new music again.

However, just because he wasn’t officially releasing music doesn’t mean we hadn’t heard from him lately. In August, he was featured alongside Drake on the leaked track “No Face,” which still has yet to see an official release as well.

Listen to Playboi Carti’s “All Red” above.

The Weeknd is generally known for embracing dark subject matter with matching aesthetics, and the first single from his new album is very much in that tradition, despite its uplifting production

“Dancing In The Flames” is an uptempo dance-pop ballad of the sort we often get from Abel Tesfaye. With lyrics encouraging a lover to “just have faith,” it seems at first listen to be a more hopeful song — but like, many of his tracks, the glittering beat hides some harrowing content. Fortunately, the video is suitably horrifying; Abel gets into a head-on collision with a semi truck, resulting in what very much looks to be a trip to the afterlife.

As a glimpse of his upcoming sixth studio album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, it suggests that the nightmarish posture of its immediate predecessors, After Hours and Dawn FM, might be in the past — which is fitting, since Hurry Up Tomorrow is being presented as the conclusion of a trilogy.

The album’s cover, which he shared earlier this week, also seems to bear out this theory, as the photo presents a bare-faced Tesfaye with tears in his eyes, a stark contrast to the old man makeup from Dawn FM and the bloodied hedonist of After Hours. In a message teasing the new album, he reinforced the optimistic speculation about the album, writing, “A new path awaits. When today ends, I’ll discover who I am.”

While he has yet to reveal the release date for Hurry Up Tomorrow, the release of “Dancing In The Flames” will surely raise the anticipation for the upcoming album.

You can listen to “Dancing In The Flames” above.

The Miami Dolphins played host to the Buffalo Bills on Thursday night in a big game in the AFC East, but what many hoped would be a competitive and fun Thursday Night Football game quickly became a Bills blowout.

Buffalo took a 24-10 lead into halftime, picking off Tua Tagovailoa three times, and the Dolphins offense lacked the explosiveness down the field that makes it so dangerous. In the third quarter, Buffalo opened that lead up to 31-10 and then disaster struck for Tagovailoa and the Dolphins as they were driving deep into Bills territory. On a 4th and 4, Tagovailoa took off on a run up the middle for the first down, but ducked his head into a defender as he fought for more yards and went into an apparent fencing response as he fell to the ground (video here).

Players on both sides quickly called to the sidelines for medical attention, and Tagovailoa would eventually walk off the field under his own power. However, he was quickly ruled out for the game with a concussion, his fourth in three years. Three of those came in the 2022 season, including a terrifying scene in Cincinnati when he suffered his second concussion in as many weeks and had to get carted off the field. That caused him to contemplate retirement for his health, but he opted to continue playing and was more protective of taking hits in the 2023 season. Hopefully he will be able to make a full, speedy recovery from his latest concussion, but both he and the Dolphins will be extremely cautious moving forward given his history of head injuries.

These days, it seems like folks on the internet can turn just about anything into a controversy. Case in point: During Tyla’s acceptance speech at last night’s MTV VMAs, she made a simple, relatable request that commenters on Twitter (never calling it “X”) twisted into a case of… bullying(?) one of the two presenters, fellow singer Halle Bailey. While being presented the moon person for Best Afrobeats, she expressed surprise at the weight of the statuette, joking, “I’m not strong enough!”

Offering the moon person to Lil Nas X, who was presenting alongside Halle, Tyla asked, “Can you hold it for me?” Twitter promptly lit up with accusations that she wanted Halle to hold it for her (although Nas was the one who ended up taking it). “Halle said baby I am NOT the help,” wrote one commentewrote one commenter Hold your own award boo. Tyla tried it.” Another added, “Halle tried handing her the cards & she brushed her off but expected her to hold her award.”

Tyla herself, though, wasn’t having any of it, shutting down such speculation with an astute observation: “Y’all make everything weird… I was not asking my girl Halle… We just girls.” She also offered those detractors some friendly advice: “STFU I WON A VMAAAA.”

Ever since her single “Water” became a ubiquitous hit, Tyla has become something of a lightning rod for manufactured controversy. In a recent interview with the Breakfast Club, she was asked a question about her coloured identity — which she had specifically asked them not to do — and before that, she was criticized for taking a photo with Representative Nancy Pelosi by fans who disagreed with Pelosi’s policies (if they even know what those polices are).

For all these folks, here’s some more advice, free of charge: Seek therapy.

Former Uproxx cover star Tate McRae is back with a new single and video, “It’s OK I’m OK,” which she dropped today after completing the US leg of her most recent tour and spending the past week promoting the new song. In the video, McRae struts the sweltering streets of New York City in a series of risqué ensembles — including her birthday suit (which is pixelated, so don’t go getting any ideas) — and returning to her dance roots. The song finds her passing off her sloppy seconds to a would-be romantic rival, telling her “it’s okay, I’m okay, had him in the first place.”

McRae exploded into stardom in 2023 after releasing the attention-grabbing singles “Exes” and “Greedy,” following up with the release of her second studio album, Think Later. She’s spent the majority of this year on tour for the album, wrapping up recently with the US finale at Madison Square Garden in New York City. She’ll return to the road in November, hopping the pond to tour her presumed boyfriend, The Kid Laroi’s, homeland: Australia and New Zealand.

Whether the release of a new single means she’s got an album on the way remains to be seen, but in the streaming era, a year turnaround isn’t too bad. Since Think Later dropped in December, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see her once again gift her fans a new album to cap the year.

Watch Tate McRae’s video for “It’s Ok, I’m Ok” above.