Category: News

Hollywood is not an artistic utopia where all creative visionaries are welcomed as equal. It’s a profit-hungry machine, one that runs on conventional storytelling from a mostly male cadre of tried and true directors churning out franchise behemoths and superhero sagas to appease the entertainment-craving masses. And yet, women are finding a way to get their stories made. They have been for decades, confronting the comfort of oft-repeated formulas — in front of and behind the camera — that normally sideline female storytellers and their singular insight, pushing back against stereotypes and forcing the powers that be to take notice.

Despite some disheartening industry reports that detail how the percentage of female directors involved in top-grossing films fell in 2021, there’s a crop of veteran filmmakers and up-and-coming talent breaking down gates that have been kept closed to them for too long. Some have years of experience behind the camera, quietly disrupting the status quo with beloved rom-com classics while some are just dipping their toes into original storytelling. The one thing they all have in common? They’re all on the rise, readying to have their names dominating the conversation this year and forging a new path for the female directors that follow. These women are crafting fresh and inventive stories within the genre spaces fans have come to love, helming Star Wars spinoffs and Marvel series. They’re also trudging familiar treks, turning out indie darlings and award-winning miniseries that prove original storytelling isn’t dead — it’s just waiting for the right director to bring it to life on-screen.

In 2022, these women are poised to go mainstream in an exciting way, delivering long-awaited TV shows and buzzworthy awards fare that Hollywood can’t help but take notice of. Here’s a handful of female directors to keep on your radar this year and beyond.

Nia DaCosta

Past Work: Little Woods, Candyman
Up Next: The Marvels

An acolyte of auteurs like Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola, Nia DaCosta’s filmography is littered with the kind of gritty, thrilling crime dramas that her predecessors are known for. What makes DaCosta different is her subject matter, and the emotional sensitivity she brings to stories that feel both universal and impressively singular.

Her first feature, the Sundance breakout Little Woods, centered on two estranged sisters, living in poverty and determined to earn a better life for themselves – by whatever means necessary. With subtly brilliant performances from Tessa Thompson and Lily James, DaCosta’s directorial debut touched on everything from women’s reproductive rights to the oppressive nature of poverty to toxic masculinity and more. When Jordan Peele tapped her to direct Candyman, a spiritual sequel to the iconic Black horror franchise, she incorporated timely themes – like gentrification, artistic gatekeeping, and America’s refusal to reckon with its racist past (and present). She’s pushing some of those social issues even further forward when she helms The Marvels, the sequel to Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, that features the studio’s first female Pakistani lead superhero, Kamala Khan — a film that feels destined to continue her growing legacy on screen as she weaves in more serious subject matter into genre and superhero fare.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

Past Work: Love & Basketball, Beyond The Lights, The Old Guard
Up Next: The Woman King

Gina Prince-Bythewood’s seminal romantic comedy Love & Basketball defined the genre in the early aughts. Starring Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps, the love story follows a pair of talented basketball players as their friendship morphs into something more over the course of a decade. The film not only gave audiences an authentic look at the trials and pitfalls of young love, but it also sported a female lead that happened to be a confident, capable Black woman breaking ground in a predominately male sport. What other early 2000s rom-com can say that?

What makes Prince-Bythewood’s filmography so impressive is her range. She adapted the bestselling novel The Secret Life of Bees, a story about the unflinching resilience of Black women and the enduring bonds of sisterhood, before creating the pop music-infused romantic drama Beyond The Lights. She switched genres again in 2020, becoming the first biracial woman to direct a comic book property with Netflix’s adrenaline-packed action-adventure The Old Guard – earning praise for crafting elaborate fight sequences and globe-trotting, fantasy-tinged storylines that played to star Charlize Theron’s strengths. Next, Prince-Bythewood is producing a sequel to the film and helming the highly-anticipated drama, The Woman King. Based on true events, the historical epic stars Viola Davis as the general of an all-female military unit in the Kingdom of Dahomey, an 18th-century African state whose Amazonian soldiers fought off French invaders.

Karen Maine

Past Work: Yes God Yes
Up Next: Rosaline

Karen Maine co-wrote the Jenny Slate-starring dark comedy, Obvious Child – a messy tale of a quick hookup gone wrong that manages to mine humor from failed relationships, unfulfilling careers, and abortion. So really, it shouldn’t be surprising that her directorial debut was the hormonally-charged teenage comedy, Yes God Yes. Starring Stranger Things’ Natalie Dyer, the film harnesses Maine’s dark comedic leanings to tell the story of a sexually-repressed Catholic schoolgirl who uses a spiritual retreat to explore her own carnal desires. It’s raunchy and bold. But it’s also incredibly sweet at times – a hard balance to strike but one Maine seems to handle with ease. She’s building up her romantic comedy street cred with a revisionist take on the Shakespearean tragedy, Romeo + Juliet, but instead of focusing on the titular lovers of fair Verona, Maine’s more interested in the scorned Rosaline and her attempts to break up the doomed couple.

Maria Schrader

Past Work: Unorthodox, I’m Your Man
Up Next: She Said

Maria Shrader’s devastating limited series Unorthodox is a difficult binge on Netflix, but a worthwhile one all the same. It tells the story of a young, ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman who flees her strict, religious upbringing following an arranged marriage. The subject matter is dark at times and the performance from star Shira Hass is haunting, but Schrader brings an integral lens through which she conveys a different perspective on female empowerment and spirituality. Her feature debut, I’m Your Man, is equally poignant with Dan Stevens playing a humanoid robot learning to be… well, human, for the first time. Soon, she’ll be tackling even more serious fare, heading up She Said, an interpretation of the groundbreaking investigation by New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor into the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the feminist movement it sparked.

Deborah Chow

Past Work: The Mandalorian, American Gods
Up Next: Obi-Wan Kenobi

Not only is Canadian filmmaker Deborah Chow the first woman and first person of Asian descent to direct a live-action Star Wars project with The Mandalorian – but she’s also the creative genius who gave us the iconic Werner Herzog delivery “I would like to see the baby,” in the show’s third episode. Chow got her start directing shorts and the critically well-received indie drama The High Cost of Living, but it’s through the Star Wars universe that she’s been able to pay homage to her Chinese father’s love of Hong Kong action films. Her climactic action sequence in the show’s first season is a tense, Yojimbo-like standoff between a group of Mandalorians and the bounty hunters that proves she’ll bring a visionary inventiveness to her next space epic, the highly-anticipated Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Meera Menon

Past Work: Farah Goes Bang, For All Mankind, The Magicians
Up Next: Ms. Marvel

A student of storytellers like Mira Nair, Lynne Ramsay, and Sofia Coppola, Meera Menon is an Indian-American director unafraid to challenge the perceived limits of her artistic capabilities by wading into multiple genres and juggling thought-provoking themes from her spot behind the lens. Her first feature, Farah Goes Bang, is a wild mix between a road-trip buddy comedy flick and a sexually-charged coming of age narrative with political undertones. And her work on shows as varied as Syfy’s The Magicians and Apple TV+’s space drama For All Mankind prove she’s confident in every timeframe and every alternate universe contained within the bounds of cinema. It’s a good thing too because next up is Ms. Marvel, the Disney+ miniseries promising us a long-awaited introduction to Marvel’s first Muslim superheroine, Kamala Khan.

Neil Young has officially pulled his music off Spotify, citing his distaste for the streaming service giving a platform to known anti-vaccine conspiracist, Joe Rogan. In the past, Neil has taken umbrage with streaming services that didn’t support high quality sound, even going so far as to create his own mp3 player at one point.

Now that most of his music, at least, is off Spotify, he’s taken back up that old point to further criticize the platform. Today, Young wrote a short missive on his site about the situation, and he also repeatedly notes that when he left Spotify “I felt better,” and encourages listeners to really dig into their experience with the platform. Read it here or check it out in full below.

“When I left SPOTIFY, I felt better.

Digital music has been with us about 40 years now. Digital, rather than reproducing copies of the music as we did back in the analog day, reconstitutes it from 1s and 0s and plays back data that you hear as music.

This allows business people like those who run SPOTIFY to cut the quality right down to 5% of the music’s content. It’s just math. It’s easy to do that with digital, thus allowing more songs and less music to stream faster. That’s because 95% is missing. Thats what SPOTIFY the Tech company does. SPOTIFY then sells you the downgraded music.
When I started everyone got to hear all the music. 100%.

AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz deliver up to 100% of the music today and it sounds a lot better than the shitty degraded and neutered sound of SPOTIFY. If you support SPOTIFY, you are destroying an art form. Business over art. SPOTIFY plays the artist’s music at 5% of its quality and charges you like it was the real thing.

AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz now deliver the real thing. SPOTIFY is ripping you off and has been since day 1. No goosebumps from SPOTIFY sound!

Switch to one of the alternatives – companies that support the arts. Real sound is available there. AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz You just have to leave Spotify and go to a new place that truly cares about music quality.

I met Danile [sic] Ek when he started SPOTIFY. it sounded to me like he was really going to be getting into it. That was a long time ago. I wonder what happened.

When I left Spotify, I felt better.

I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others.

As an unexpected bonus, I sound better everywhere else.

love earth be well neil”

Even though HBO Max’s hit The Righteous Gemstones just returned for its long-awaited second season this month, many are wondering if the series will keep going after the season finale, which airs later in February.

The show, which began in 2019, follows the Gemstone family and their shenanigans as a televangelical family that might not be as squeaky as their church-members believe them to be. The first season was met with critical acclaim. But will there be a third season after the second finishes up? Or will the story end there?

The good news is that HBO Max renewed The Righteous Gemstones for a third season, which will most likely air sometime in 2023. While no official premiere date is set, it definitely will exist. We have not seen the last of the Gemstones.

Executive Vice President of HBO Amy Gravitt confirmed the news earlier this week, saying “After a season of literal fire and brimstone, blood, sand, and rollerblading, who wouldn’t come back for more?” says Gravitt. “The Gemstone family makes us laugh like nobody else.”

The show stars John Goodman as patriarch Eli Goodman and his children, eldest Jesse (Danny McBride), middle (and often looked-over) Judy (Edi Patterson) and the youngest, Kelvin (Adam DeVine). Other stars include Cassidy Freeman, Tony Cavalero, Tim Baltz, Skyler Gisondo, Greg Alan Williams, Walton Goggins,and Jennifer Nettles.

You can catch up on all of the Gemstones drama, streaming on HBO Max.

In the video for “Little Havana” from Rick Ross’ eleventh studio album Richer Than I Ever Been, a title card introduces the song’s guest monologue from Willie Falcon, explaining just who the former kingpin is for those who heard him on the original but didn’t understand his significance to the Miami rapper’s music.

The video also adds a counterpoint from Ross himself, framing Falcon’s opening monologue as a phone conversation between the two men as Willie looks over his gorgeous tropical surroundings and Ross surveys his luxuriously appointed, fully stocked liquor shelf. As the beat kicks in, Ross and The-Dream, the song’s other featured artist, cruise through the nighttime Miami streets in a Rolls-Royce convertible taking in the city’s neon-washed nightlife.

In addition to “Little Havana,” Ross’ latest album also includes the singles “Outlawz” featuring 21 Savage and Jazmine Sullivan, and “Wiggle” featuring DreamDoll. The 12-song album, which also featured Benny The Butcher, Blxst, Future, Wale, and Wiz Khalifa, was followed up by a deluxe version that added three new songs including “Vacheron” featuring Golden Era veteran AZ and “Not For Nothing” with frequent Ross collaborator Anderson .Paak.

Watch Rick Ross’ “Little Havana” video featuring The-Dream and Willie Falcon above.

Richer Than I Ever Been is out now via Epic Records. You can stream it here.

Nothing can ever fully prepare you for being an adult. Once you leave childhood behind, the responsibilities, let-downs and setbacks come at you fast. It’s tiring and expensive, and there’s no easy-to-follow roadmap for happiness and success.

A Reddit user named u/Frequent-Pilot5243 asked the online forum, “What’s an adult problem nobody prepared you for?” and there were a lot of profound answers that get to the heart of the disappointing side of being an adult.

One theme that ran through many responses is the feeling of being set adrift. When you’re a kid, the world is laid out as a series of accomplishments. You learn to walk, you figure out how to use the bathroom, you start school, you finish school, maybe you go to college, and so on.

However, once we’re out of the school system and out from under our parents’ roofs, there is a vast, complicated world out there and it takes a long time to learn how it works. The tough thing is that if you don’t get a good head start, you can spend the rest of your life playing catch-up.

---

Then, you hit middle age and realize that life is short and time is only moving faster.

Adulthood also blindsides a lot of people because we realize that many adults are simply children who grew older. The adult world is a lot more like high school than a teenager could ever imagine.

The Reddit thread may seem a bit depressing at first, but there are a lot of great lessons that younger people can take to heart. The posts will also make older people feel a lot better because they can totally relate.

Being an adult is hard, exhausting and expensive. But we’re all in this together and by sharing the lessons we’ve learned we can help lighten each other’s load just a bit.

Here are 21 of the most powerful responses to the question: “What is an adult problem nobody prepared you for?”

1. Lack of purpose

“Lack of purpose. All your young life you are given purpose of passing exams and learning, then all of a sudden you are thrown into the world and told to find your own meaning,” — Captain_Snow.

2. No bed time

“You can stay up as late as you want. But you shouldn’t,” — geek-fit

3. Friendships

“Where did all my friends go?” — I_Love_Small_Breasts

Most of them are at the same place as you are … Probably wondering the same thing,” — Blackdraon003

4. Bodily changes

“I’m closer to fifty than forty, would have been nice to be better prepared for some of the ways your body starts to change at this point that don’t normally get talked about. For instance your teeth will start to shift from general aging of your gums,” — dayburner.

5. People don’t change

“Didnt know that other adults have the emotional intelligence of teenagers and its almost impossible to deal with logically,” — Super-Progress-6386

6. Money

“$5K is a lot to owe, but not a lot to have,” — Upper-Job5130

7. Our parents age, too

“Handling the decline and death of your parents,” – Agave666

8. Free time

“Not having a lot of free-time or time by myself,” — detective_kiara

9. No goals

“Not having a pre-defined goal once I was out of college. Growing up my goals were set for me: get through elementary school! then middle school! Then high school, and get into college and get a degree, then get a job, and then…? Vague “advance in your career, buy a house, find a spouse, have a kid or multiple, then retire.” At 22 I had no idea how to break that down more granularly,” — FreehandBirdlime

10. Constant upkeep

“Life is all about maintenance. Your body, your house, your relationships, everything requires constant never ending maintenance,” — IHateEditedBGMusic

11. Exhaustion

“Being able to do so many things because I’m an adult but too tired to do any of them,” — London82

12. Loneliness

“Being an adult feels extremely lonely,” — Bluebloop0

13. Dinner

“Having to make dinner every. Fucking. Day,” — EndlesslyUnfinished

14. Time changes

“The more life you’ve lived, the faster time seems to go,” — FadedQuill

15. You’re responsibile, even if you didn’t mean it

“You are held to account for bad behaviour for which you are negligent even if you had no intention to cause harm. As a lawyer, I see this all the time. People don’t think they’re responsible for mistakes. You are,” — grishamlaw

16. Work is like high school

“The intricacies of workplace politics,” — Steve_Lobsen writes. “

“When you’re in school, you think that you won’t have to deal with gossiping and bullying once you leave school. Unfortunately, that is not true,” — lady_laughs_too_much

17. Nowhere to turn

“How easy it is to feel stuck in a bad situation (job, relationship, etc) just because the cost and effort of getting out can seem daunting. And sometimes you just have to accept a figurative bowl full of shit because you can’t afford to blow up your life,” — movieguy95453

18. The happiness question

“Figuring out what makes you happy. Everyone keeps trying to get you to do things you’re good at, or that makes you money, but never to pursue what you enjoy,” — eternalwanderer5

19. Constant cleaning

“The kitchen is always dirty. You’ll clean it at least three times every day,” — cewnc

20. Life costs money

“One adult problem nobody prepared me for is how expensive everything is. I always thought that as an adult I would be able to afford the things I wanted, but it turns out that’s not always the case! I’ve had to learn how to budget and save up for the things I want, and it’s been a difficult process,” — Dull_Dog_8126

21. Keeping above water

“All of it together. I was relatively warned about how high rent is, car bills and repairs, how buying healthy food is expensive as hell but important for your health, how to exercise and save what you can, my parents did their best to fill in my knowledge about taxes and healthcare and insurance that my schooling missed, about driving and cleaning a household, about setting boundaries at work but working hard and getting ahead if you can, about charity and what it means to take care of a pet and others, about being a good partner if you were lucky enough to have one, about how dark and messed up the world is when you just read the news and what all that means to me and my community… I was reasonably warned about all of it.

“No one could have ever prepared me for how hard doing all of it at the same time and keeping your head above that water would actually be,” — ThatNoNameWriter

Kids might say the darnedest things, but occasionally they also give sage advice.

A teacher in the United Kingdom by the name of George Pointon has made a name for himself by tweeting his 6-year-old students’ comical, candid and sometimes profound answers to weekly questions.

Or, as he humorously writes in his Twitter bio, “exploiting children’s imagination for likes.”

One of my favorite threads so far is when Pointon asked his students to create a “mantra to help us through life.” The teacher posted each student’s response, along with some commentary.

It’s all some noteworthy food for thought, if not harmless, wholesome entertainment.

Best of all, the genuine affection Pointon has for his students is undeniable.

---

Rory: “Don’t stop running”

Pointon: “The other day I grunted when picking up my keys from the table. If I didn’t stop running, I’d die. Rory has gone for the Forrest Gump approach here. It seemed to work for him. Forrest that is. I’ve seen Rory run into multiple trees. Persistent tho.”

Rory might be running into trees, but some spot-on perspectives on life as well.

JJ: “Only be friends with people who you want to be friends with”

Pointon: “This gets forgotten about in adults. Sometimes we are friends with people out of convenience or history. Look around and ask yourself, “does this person positively impact my life?”. JJ has his head screwed on.”

JJ understands the value of authentic friendship. And, as Pointon reflected, setting boundaries and letting go is something so many adults struggle with, though there are countless sources noting its importance.

Jack: “You might [get] told off but sometimes you’re not doing anything wrong”

Pointon: “His anti-authority attitude is refreshing as it is scary. He’s right tho. Fight for what you believe in and it’s never wrong. Although Jack believes he can back flip over a lorry, so I don’t know.”

What’s a lorry, you may ask? Turns out it’s a British term for an 18-wheeler. I didn’t know either.

Ravi: “Some people don’t have anything so be happy you have everything”

Pointon: “We truly are in the presence of greatness. There are world leaders without this clarity. Step back and look at what we take for granted, you’ll be amazed. Ravi elevates people around him. He’s a special lad.”

I believe this was a major theme that “Don’t Look Up” was trying to convey. Well done, Ravi.

Lola: “You can’t swim in a sink but a bath is just a big sink”

Pointon: “I believe she’s talking about perspective. One person’s baby step is another’s giant leap. Lola moves at her pace and is proud of the people around her moving at theirs. Otherwise you’ll lose a one horse race.”

I’m gonna assume Lola is also a proponent of the “just keep swimming” mentality.

Emma: “The people who don’t talk, still have something to say”

Pointon: “Empty vessels makes the most noise. Emma is quiet and has grown in confidence since I’ve known her. She is an advocate for letting people be themselves. A true woman of her time. She’ll make an excellent leader.”

Hear, hear for quiet confidence, Emma.

Belle: “Flowers live in the ground, we live in a house. Everyone lives somewhere.”

Pointon: “It’s a huge, overwhelming concept to think every individual lives an equally complex and rich life as you. Knowing that everyone is coming from something make[s] you see we’re all the same. One team.”

A lesson in empathy, taught by Belle.

Mikey: “Mud hills are fun but also muddy”

Pointon: “I’d never heard of the term “mud hill” but I assumed it’s a hill, that is muddy. I was wrong. It’s basically a pile of mud mashed up and used to throw at cars or people…So if you see a boy holding a mud ball with a devilish grin, run.”

No such thing as good, clean fun, according to Mikey.

Zahra: “Some things are cool and some things aren’t”

Pointon: “There is no messing about with Zahra. A woman of precision. She wanted to add that if you find things cool, then it is. Which in itself is a pretty cool thing to say. If you enjoy something, don’t let other[s] bring you down.”

Zahra is clearly the Queen of Cool.

Susanna: “Don’t start a fire in a forrest”

Pointon: “I take this as, understanding your situation and objectively being able to know what is benefitting you and what isn’t. But Susanna confirmed that there is no subtext. Just don’t start fires in forrests because it goes whoosh, okay.”

I also love how Pointon was loyal to Susanna’s spelling of the word “forrest.” That dedication right there.

According to indy100, Pointon protects the identity of his young pupils by using made-up aliases. But reassured, the answers provided are all too real.

Pointon told indy100, “School can sometimes make you think quite linear, like there are only right or wrong answers but, especially with them being so young, their thoughts are actually really abstract.”

Passion, purpose, and a dash of social media stardom have allowed Pointon to help raise awareness around children’s issues. Last November he worked with the Anti-Bullying Alliance, asking the question “what makes you unique?”

For Zahra, it was her two different eye colors. For Susanna, it was the fact that she could fit 100 grapes in her mouth (Pointon isn’t so sure, but encouraging nonetheless).

Pointon hopes to work with even more charities, using his platform to “have conversations with children about things that need to be spoken about, or things that are going on in the world and get their point of view on things.”

In the meantime, you can catch all of Pointon’s thoughtful questions, along with his students’ endearing and brilliant answers, on Twitter.

For the past year, Babyface Ray has been a rapper on the rise, standing at the forefront of the emerging Detroit/Michigan underground rap scene along with fellow Motor City natives like Icewear Vezzo and Rio Da Yung OG. Today, he finally arrived as a fully-fledged rap star with the release of his debut album, Face. Along with the album’s release, Ray also shared the video for the standout track “My Thoughts 3,” which splits the video with “Pop’s Prayer.”

In the video, Ray performs the two songs amid snowy Detroit suburbs and overlooking the frozen Lake Michigan with the city center looming over the background. The songs themselves lean toward reflective, as Ray takes stock of this transitory point in his life while he prepares to crossover to being one of the hottest names in rap.

Face, out now via Empire, features 20 songs, with production from big names like DJ Esco, OG Parker, Pooh Beatz, Sledgren, and Southside. Meanwhile, guest artists on the debut album include fellow Detroiters 42 Dugg and Icewear Vezzo, Chicago drill mainstay G Herbo, rising Atlanta songwriter Landstrip Chip (who appears alongside coke rap veteran Pusha T on “Dancing With The Devil“), and world-class cool guy Wiz Khalifa.

Watch Babyface Ray’s “My Thoughts/3 Pop’s Prayer” video above.

Face is out now via Wavy Gang/Empire. You can stream it here.

Not all heroes wear capes, and not all Marvel stars are skeptical of vaccines — but some are. Letitia Wright reportedly shared anti-vaxx views on the set of Black Panther 2 (she denied the claims), and on Thursday, Ant-Man star Evangeline Lilly revealed on Instagram that she attended the Defeat the Mandates protest in Washington D.C. It’s the same rally where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. implied that Anne Frank had more freedom in hiding from the Nazis than Americans have today with vaccination policies.

“I was in DC this weekend to support bodily sovereignty while Canadian truckers were rallying for their cross-country, peaceful convoy in support of the same thing,” Lilly wrote, along with a quote from tech investor and women-be-shopping comedian Naval Ravikant: “All tyranny begins with the desire to coerce others for the greater good.”

None of Lilly’s Marvel Cinematic Universe co-stars have publicly called her out by name… yet, but at least two appear to have responded to her post on Twitter.

“It’s so unfortunate when people with a large platform use that platform to share irresponsible things,” tweeted David Dastmalchian, who played Kurt in Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp (and Polka-Dot Man in The Suicide Squad). A few hours later, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu wrote, “I lost my grandparents to COVID last year. They were still waiting for their vaccines. I’m fortunate to have been double-vaccinated and boosted when I got COVID 2 weeks ago. Felt like a cold. The media needs to stop spotlighting opinions that are not rooted in facts or science.”

Come on, Chris Evans, stop tweeting about dogs and say something. Actually, let me rephrase that: keep tweeting dogs and say something.

After being leaving/being removed from Fox News in 2016 for alleging harassment from CEO Roger Ailes and suing the network for sexual harassment, former anchor Gretchen Carlson is speaking out on the current state of the conservative news channel, and she doesn’t like what she sees. While appearing on CNN Newsroom for a segment called “Democracy in Peril,” Carlson called out Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham for their involvement in leading Fox News down a path of only opinion-based journalism and conspiracy theories that’s affecting members of Congress.

Via Raw Story:

“This is the result of fake news,” Carlson said. “You know, we’re seeing not only the fallout from fake news during the Trump era, but what happened with the insurrection on January 6th. Now it’s moving into other areas. Not just news, now it’s hitting science with vaccines, and now it’s into Cold War politics.”

As Carlson went on to chastise the hypocrisy of Hannity and Graham for texting the Trump White House about the seriousness of the January 6 insurrection while downplaying the event as “patriotic” to viewers, she called the network a “complete disservice to our country” that’s completely altered the political landscape.

“Conservative television news is certainly not the conservative news that was out there even just five years ago,” Carlson said. “There’s a big difference between having a conservative opinion and having one that supports conspiracy theories.”

(Via Raw Story)

PartyNextDoor releases are rare — unless you’re the gifted and ingenious producer known as OG Parker, of course.

OG Parker and Party in the studio, creating music? Regular. They are good friends, after all. In the music business, however, just because a producer records a song with an artist, doesn’t mean that the song will actually see the light of day. With that understanding, somehow the award-winning hitmaker was miraculously able to get a solo record from the elusive crooner, and it’s a seductive poetic vibe titled “No Fuss.”

Ready and made for Party, “No Fuss” sees the OVO Sound singer gently opting to be a lover, not a fighter. “Don’t wanna feel pain / Don’t want no fuss or fight,” he insists throughout the song. According to Parker, “No Fuss” was originally a track created from a pool of beats that he had shared. While on a Costa Rica trip, Party played “No Fuss” for Parker for the first time. After hearing it, the beatmaker instantly hinted that he wanted the song for his upcoming EP, Moments. Without hesitation, Party apparently replied, “I got you.”

“He’s literally like my brother so it’s a little different,” Parker explained of the ease it took to obtain such a sonic rarity over a Zoom call. “He’s a very secretive person, he keeps to himself and he only f*cks with people he feels like are family.”

“No Fuss” is the second single to be released from Moments and is the follow-up to 2021’s “Rain” featuring Chris Brown, Layton Greene, Latto, and PnB Rock.

“It’s about 70% to 80% done, I would say, and we’re looking for it to come out a little bit after summer,” he revealed to me in an interview last year. He also mentioned in the same interview that Party (among others) would possibly be on it and here we are with a brand new single less than a year later.

I know fans want to know what this means as far as a new PartyNextDoor project, so I definitely asked. The truth is, we may never know and neither does Parker.

“Nah, I honestly don’t,” Parker told me with a pause and grin when I asked if there’s more PND on the way. “I don’t even like talking about that.”

He quickly assured me that Party is always in the studio and they have a lot of “crazy” music together, though. Whether or not a follow-up to 2020’s Partymobile will arrive in 2022 is a mystery in itself but for now, let’s thank OG Parker for this rare PND audible treat after starving for two, long, years.

Press play on OG Parker and PartyNextDoor’s “No Fuss” up top.

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