Category: News

Monday night, TDE rapper Isaiah Rashad performed the second of two nights at The Novo in Downtown Los Angeles as part of his Lil’ Sunny’s Awesome Vacation tour promoting the new album, The House Is Burning. Uproxx attended and here’s what we learned. The TDE rapper brought the right guests, made the right moves, protected the fans, and laid down the blueprint for a perfect show.

Make A Good First Impression

The show starts with the openers. Bad ones can suck the energy right out of a room. Good ones can energize a crowd, making the headliner’s job ultimately easier. Mediocre ones — the ones we see most — can leave the audience feeling restless and impatient, making little to no impression.

The openers for Isaiah Rashad were pulled from his long list of like-minded industry pals, and they absolutely fell under the “good” category. Ray Vaughn, the new TDE signee who set the internet on fire with his LA Leakers freestyle, held the stage like a 10-year veteran. Childish Major, who has produced and rapped alongside some of TDE’s Dreamville cohorts, brought a relaxed vibe before turning all the way up to close out his set. This is the best you can hope for: Openers who know what they’re doing and do it well but don’t outshine the star player. There’s a lot of potential for both — especially Vaughn — but for now, they play the bench role well.

Presentation Matters

As much as fans attend concerts to see their favorite artists in person, they also want to see a show. That includes everything onstage that is not the artist, like backgrounds and stage dressing. Some artists like to use props or elaborate backdrops. Some like to keep it simple — which can put more pressure on the artists themselves to hold an audience’s attention.

Like many artists these days, Isaiah employs a video backdrop displaying various imagery throughout his set, but impressively, it tells a story as much as his setlist does. Rather than showing off some dazzling but disconnected graphic designs, the background connects to the theme of his album, The House Is Burning, giving a virtual tour throughout the burning house’s interior. As his set expands its scope to encompass classic Rashad tunes, the view shifts to beautiful aerial shots of Los Angeles’ various stadiums and landmarks before the burning begins again, slowly creeping in from the edges to recreate the paranoid, ominous mood from the album itself.

Show Love To The City

This one seems simple enough, but it can be overlooked or undersold as a result. More than simply shouting out the town where you happen to be at the moment, there are little flourishes that can make concertgoers at a tour stop feel like “their” show is special, even if you’re doing the same show at every single stop on the tour.

On Monday night, Isaiah made sure to use a few local events to his advantage. The Dodgers are in the playoffs; he wore a Clayton Kershaw jersey. (The Dodgers lost to the Giants, but what are you gonna do?) The first night of the Los Angeles stop sold so well, a second night was added. At that second night, Rashad and his guests prompted a lighthearted rivalry between attendees at both nights to spur greater heights of energy from the second crowd. Simple, clever, effective.

Give Your Guests Time To Shine

Just as important as what the headliner brings to the table is who they bring. In Isaiah’s case, he promised he had a “good chunk” of TDE’s roster in attendance and made good on that promise, bringing out Jay Rock, Doechii, and Zacari at points throughout the set. In addition, surprise appearances were made by Smino and YGTut. Smino by far got the biggest pop.

Zacari got to preview a new song and I may never be able to get Doechii’s holy ghost dance during her own snippet out of my head. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Doechii headlining this very venue by this time next year. She’s a star.

Bring Back Hype Men

Throughout his set, Isaiah’s energy never flagged. While much of that is due to the unique way he constructs songs (he has a long of breathing room between bars) and his set (always use the high-low pattern so you can catch your wind), much of his ability to conserve and distribute that energy throughout was due to the presence of his producer, Kal Banx.

Although Kal is a strong artist in his own right, his familiarity with Rashad’s material made him a perfect foil for the star to play off of. A lot of artists want to prove that they can maintain their stage presence throughout a show, but unless you’re exceptionally athletic, things like having support actually boost the performance.

Roast Your Fans A Little

When Rashad brought a trio of exuberant fans onstage to recite Lil Uzi Vert’s verse from “Front The Garden,” it rapidly became clear that none of the three actually knew the words. Rather than simply kicking them offstage, Zay spent a little time interacting with them, teasing them for just wanting to be seen rather than actually learning the lyrics.

But Protect Them Too

However, as some fans in the crowd tried to boo the kids for their epic fail, Rashad kept things positive, admonishing the audience that he’d already instructed them of the rules at the beginning of the set. Among those rules, he took care to instruct the men to keep their hands to themselves where the women were concerned. I appreciated that.

Hit ‘Em With The Hits

Although the Lil’ Sunny tour was ostensibly to promote The House Is Burning, Isaiah wisely sprinkled in fan faves from Cilvia Demo and The Sun’s Tirade like “Shot You Down” and “Free Lunch.” The fans appreciated it, losing it when those songs played because of both the surprise factor and their familiarity.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

If HBO was looking to snag their very own Stranger Things, they might have just found it. According to Deadline, HBO has put into development a television adaptation of the best-selling graphic novel series Misfit City, a thrilling adventure story about a group of five teens, a washed-up old town, and a centuries-old pirate map. Published back in 2017 by BOOM! Studios, the riveting series invokes the same nostalgia that drove folks wild when Netflix’s Stranger Things did it back in 2016 — and with a story this compelling, snagging the rights to a series adaptation could be a major win for HBO:

Smothered by her backwater hometown and frustrated by its 1980s cult-movie fame (The Gloomies… have you seen it? It’s a real classic, y’know.), Wilder is pretty sure she’s seen everything Cannon Cove has to offer. She’s desperate to get away from home as soon as she can, and move on to bigger, better, and less annoying things… even if that might mean leaving her best friends behind. But when Wilder discovers a centuries-old pirate map, she may find out that REAL adventure was in their tiny town all along… and they need each other to get to the bottom of it!

Hannah Hafey and Kaitlin Smith, the writers behind HBO’s Popular are set to serve as the show’s creators and executive producers. However, fans of the comic book series will be delighted to know creators Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith — who’s also done a lot of work in film between writing on Legally Blonde, 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s the Man, The House Bunny and the Emmy-winning series Trinkets — and her co-creator, Kurt Lustgarten, will also be producing on the HBO series. In addition, BOOM! Studios’ Stephen Christy, Ross Richie, and Mark Ambrose will also executive produce, with Mette Norkjaer co-executive producing.

As of right now, no additional details about the cast or when the show is slated to premiere have been given.

“And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time” could be a way to describe William Shatner’s wait to actually head into space (at age 90) after his (for all practical purposes) lifelong run as forever Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame. And on this fine Wednesday morning, William Shatner actually made good on his reputation by blasting into space (for real) on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ anatomically-shaped rocket. The pop-culture institution and three other passengers finally ended up on the New Shepard vessel, in which they glided into the very edge of space before making a safe touchdown on planet Earth.

Following Shatner’s return to civilization, CNN reports that he grew very emotional after his sub-orbital journey (which included a few minutes of weightlessness). He told Jeff Bezos, “What you have given me is the most profound experience I can imagine.” And it seems that Shatner fans, as well, are feeling similarly. In fact, this day has seen Shatner’s late 1970s Saturn Awards rendition of Elton John’s “Rocketman” go viral. Decades later, the clip’s still as funny and bizarre as ever while featuring a smoking, tuxedo-adorned Shatner — multiple versions of him, even — doing the spoken-word thing. Can we consider this “singing”? Probably not. “Dancing,” though? For sure.

The clip began to heavily circulate during blast-off time, and for good reason.

Congrats to William Shatner, and welcome back to civilization.

Dave Chappelle may well be in hot water over his latest Netflix special at the moment, but his influence remains as strong as ever. Just take a look at J. Cole’s “Mt. Rushmore of Rap” display from his Off-Season tour currently crossing the nation. The cheeky statue takes just as much inspiration from Chappelle’s Show as it does from the Twitter meme it references, borrowing one of the hilarious bits from Dave’s parodic Making The Band sketch. Just like Chappelle’s exaggerated version of Jamaican rapper Dylan’s top 5 rappers of all time, Cole’s Mt. Rushmore consists of just one name/face.

J. Cole’s.

As you can see, the cheeky display, which flashes during his set, consists of just four photos of Cole at different stages of his career (remember when he had the bald fade? Time flies!). The screenshot above comes courtesy of Vibe‘s recap of the Dallas tour stop by Eric Diep, who caught the moment and posted it to Twitter for posterity.

The jokey Mt. Rushmore is illuminating after Cole’s “Heaven’s EP” freestyle in which he compares himself to contemporaries Drake and Kendrick Lamar, ranking himself third behind them. However, on the first night of his tour, Drake popped out to refute Cole’s statement, calling him “one of the greatest rappers to ever touch a mic.”

Coldplay and Ed Sheeran are some of the biggest musicians in the UK right now, and seeing since both have albums set to drop in coming weeks, they decided to join together for a fun surprise. Coldplay was performing a show in London’s venue Shepherd’s Bush Empire to promote their next LP Music Of The Spheres when they brought Sheeran out to the stage as a surprise guest.

The surprise visit by Sheeran came just after Coldplay launched into a performance of their popular track “Fix You.” About halfway through Coldplay’s rendition of the hit song, Sheeran casually walked onto the stage with an acoustic guitar, completely unannounced. The crowd absolutely lost it as Sheeran took over lead vocal duties from Chris Martin.

After shocking fans with his surprise visit, Coldplay decided to honor the guest singer by performing one of his recent singles. They opted for the track “Shivers” from his forthcoming album =, with both Martin and Sheeran rocking out on an acoustic guitar and harmonizing the chorus.

Watch Sheeran and Coldplay perform “Shivers” and “Fix You” above.

Coldplay’s Music Of The Spheres is out 10/15 via Parlophone. Pre-order it here.

Ed Sheeran’s = is out 10/29 via Asylum. Pre-order it here.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In breaking news that you’d need to be an idiot to not have figured out on your own already: We consumed a lot of alcohol—and TV content—in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. (No judgments if you’re still doing it; the pandemic is still in full swing, unfortunately.)

As Deadline reports, scientists at UCLA decided to confirm what we already know—and further make us feel ashamed for the sloth-like habits we’ve developed—by digging into just what Americans were doing in the early days of COVID, as restaurants, entertainment venues, and many workplaces began to close up shop. According to Dr. Liwei Chen, an associate professor of epidemiology at UCLA Fielding School and lead author of the study, which was published in the Swiss journal Nutrients on Tuesday:

“We found that regulations to restrict non-essential activities and stay-at-home orders during the pandemic have had profoundly negative impacts on multiple lifestyle behaviors in American adults. As bad as these changes have been for all Americans, they disproportionately impact racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S., who already bear a higher disease burden from COVID-19.”

While the amount of exercise time people engaged in decreased by 31.2 percent, their screen time increased by a whopping 60.4 percent. Alcohol consumption also saw a marked spike—people drank 23.2 percent more—and smoking increased by nine percent. The only positive trend was the decrease in fast food consumption: That number dropped from 1.41 times per week to .96 (though shuttered businesses and loss of income could have something to do with that number, which doesn’t make it much of a silver lining).

As the study specifically looked at the early days of the pandemic, Dr. Jian Li—a co-author of the study who also works with the Fielding School’s Center for Occupational and Environmental Health—says more research is necessary to determine whether these bad habits “persisted as the pandemic continued, and whether individual’s quality of life and health well-being are subsequently affected.”

According to Deadline, Li concluded that “it is clear that resources and support that can help people maintain healthy lifestyles, during the pandemic and afterwards, are urgently needed.”

No sh*t!

(Via Deadline)

In theory, the Brooklyn Nets and the Philadelphia 76ers can remedy their single-biggest problem in the lead-up to the 2021-22 NBA season by trading Kyrie Irving for Ben Simmons. The former can’t play with the team until he receives a COVID-19 vaccine, the latter doesn’t want to be in Philly anymore, and both players would be sensational fits on their new teams.

There is just one problem: Sam Amick of The Athletic reports the Sixers have no interest in making this deal. According to Amick, the Sixers are not convinced that getting Irving and Joel Embiid on the floor together would work out any better than Embiid and Simmons.

One thing is for sure — at least for now. While an Irving trade for Ben Simmons with Philadelphia is seen by some as an easy solution to both teams’ problems, sources with knowledge of the 76ers’ view said there is no interest in Irving at the moment. From management on down, it seems there is an unsurprising level of skepticism about that pairing working out any better than the Joel Embiid-Simmons duo that is zombified at the moment.

From a basketball perspective, pairing Embiid with the kind of perimeter scorer and creator that Irving is makes a ton of sense. Embiid’s never really played with someone quite like him, and it would be hard not to get excited about that possibility. But there have been rumblings that Irving, should he get traded, would retire, and it’s understandable that any of the other 29 teams would be concerned about acquiring him given that fact.

About a year and a half after the release of her album Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers is finally able to take her album on the road. She’s been performing across the country at venues and festivals, like ACL, which recently cut the sound off during her set. Though she’s still on tour, the singer was still able to stop by Jimmy Kimmel Live! to give an otherworldly performance of her Punisher track “Moon Song.”

This time around, Bridgers chose not to wear her signature skeleton costume, which she has sported in several of her performances. Instead, the singer fully leaned into the “Moon Song” aesthetic by building the set to look like a space station on the moon. She and her backup musician were dressed in reflective NASA suits and stood in front of faux space ships.

During her set, Bridgers was accompanied by just one other musician, violin player Rob Moose, who contributed to several songs on Punisher. What Bridgers lacked in instruments, the singer made up for with her room-filling vocals. Backed by the frantic chords of Moose’s violin, the singer belted a tender reflection on a complicated but meaningful relationship.

Watch Bridgers’ “Moon Song” performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! above.

Punisher is out now via Dead Oceans. Get it here.

After a series of delays and growing concerns about his age, William Shatner has officially gone where no TV actor has gone before: outer space. The iconic actor, best known as Star Trek‘s Captain Kirk, left the Earth on Wednesday morning aboard the second launch of Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin capsule. Minutes later, Shatner was back on solid ground where he was visibly emotional from the once-in-a-lifetime experience.

After emerging from the capsule with his fellow astronauts, Shatner was greeted by Bezos, who stood by as the actor pontificated on the space flight.

“I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened. It’s extraordinary, extraordinary. I hope I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it. It’s so much larger than me and life,” Shatner told Bezos via CNN. “What you have given me is the most profound experience I can imagine. It hasn’t got anything to do with the little green men and the blue orb. It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death.”

Clearly moved by seeing the vastness of space, Shatner continued to expound on the experience to Bezos, who wanted to hear every word of it as the crew celebrated around them.

“You look down, there’s the blue down there and the black up there … there is Mother Earth and comfort, and there is, is there death? I don’t know, but is that death? Is that the way death is?” Shatner said. “It was so moving; this experience, it was something unbelievable.”

(Via CNN)

LeBron James and Anthony Davis both played in the Los Angeles Lakers’ 111-99 preseason loss to the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night. Neither guy played a ton, they both did a solid job as they’re working off the rust that might have built up this past offseason, and it is still the preseason, so neither dude seemed particularly bummed about how things went after the game, in part because their focus was on something else: Squid Game.

James and Davis both spoke to the media, with James going first. After his time at the podium came to an end, Davis started walking up, and the pair had a quick conversation about Netflix’s smash hit series that is the most-watched show in the company’s history. While there are obviously spoilers in the below video, the biggest takeaway was that James did not like how it ended.

This sentiment was shared by another NBA player, Miles Bridges of the Charlotte Hornets.

It is very funny how visibly upset James is over the final episode of a television show. Then again, people really got into the first season of Squid Game, so it makes sense that even LeBron James would have such a strong reaction to how it ended.