Category: News

Even if the Grammys weren’t on board to recognize Halsey’s talents this year — seriously, Manic was easily one of the best and most ambitious pop albums of 2020 — there’s another corner of the music industry that understands just how influential they are. Halsey picked up a CMT Award last night (and so did another well-known pop star), along with their collaborator (and the show’s co-host) Kelsea Ballerini, for a performance the pair did last year for CMT.

Their rendition of “The Other Girl” from the show’s 2020 event picked up the trophy for CMT Performance of The Year — not too shabby considering they were up against competitors like Brooks & Dunn, Luke Combs, Noah Cyrus and Little Big Town. The performance they won for is above, a pretty impressive one at that. Pulled off during COVID-19 precautions, the two performers danced and sang in an empty bar, telling the story of two very different partners dating the same man, and reflecting on what it feels like to know about one another… and still stay.

The song is off Ballerini’s 2020 album, Kelsea, and is her first collaboration with Halsey. For their part, Halsey went a little bit country on the Manic track “You Should Be Sad,” which has a similar vibe to their collab! Check out the performance above and congratulations to both Halsey and Kelsea.

Summer Game Fest, one of the summer’s biggest gaming showcases, began this afternoon. As part of the proceedings, Weezer helped to open the kick-off stream by performing a new song called “Tell Me What You Want.” As the band took the virtual stage, they started trending on Twitter for a number of reasons.

During the song, Rivers Cuomo coughed (seemingly intentionally as part of the song’s lyrics) while referencing a certain online music publication, singing, “Don’t be influenced by an office full of dorks / I won’t mention any names… [coughs] Pitchfork.” Those watching the event took notice of both the coughing and the Pitchfork diss:

A few others saw the cough as an opportunity to joke that the band has finally lived up to their name by wheezing on a song.

The performance also included footage from the forthcoming game Wave Break, in which there will be a level called “Weezy Mode” that’s based on the new song. The band, Wave Break developer Funktronic Labs, and Crush Games have also “taken steps to ensure ‘Tell Me What You Want’ is stream-safe, so it can be freely used on Twitch, YouTube, and anywhere else without being blocked or losing monetization.” As for Wave Break, it’s described as “the world’s first skateBOATING game, inspired by arcade skateboarding classics.” Both the game and song will be released tomorrow, June 11.

Watch Weezer perform “Tell Me What You Want” above.

Borderlands’ fan-favorite Tiny Tina is getting her own fantastical spin-off game with Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. The game was announced as a part of the Summer Games Fest Kickoff livestream, which started earlier today and is running on and off throughout the month. According to the trailer, this next chapter in the Borderlands saga will hit PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC in early 2022.

Based on the trailer, the gameplay looks very similar to the rest of the games in the Borderlands series, with fast-paced gunplay and loot galore. However, unlike Borderlands, in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands players will get the chance to create and customize their own characters. In addition, the game will feature a setting similar to the Tiny Tina DLC in Borderlands 2, which is based off the popular TTRPG Dungeons & Dragons and will allow players to take on dragons and all sorts of ferocious beasts. Gearbox has confirmed the game will have a full-length campaign as well as four-player co-op

If that’s not enough to get you pumped, Ashly Burch (who you might recognize as Rachel from Apple TV’s Mythic Quest) is returning to the world of Borderlands to voice Tiny Tina and is bringing with her series newcomers, and comedy legends, Andy Samberg, Wanda Sykes, and Will Arnett.

After teasing a new single, “Need To Know” earlier yesterday, Doja Cat bit the bullet and finally dropped the info on her hotly-anticipated new album, Planet Her. But the bigger news in all the tracklist features and album release dates? That we have another Doja/Ari collaboration coming our way! After their slightly underwhelming joint track on Positions, “Motive,” it looks like this song is going to have a lot to say. As shared yesterday on the tracklist, the title of their song is “I Don’t Do Drugs,” which may or may not be a volatile concept, depending on how they approach it.

Of course, let’s not forget the “34 + 35” remix that featured both Doja and Megan Thee Stallion adding raunchy verses to Ari’s already explicit version. One of the standouts on Positions, the music video was another delightful girls-night-in concept that suited the subject matter well. No word yet on whether Ari and Doja have a video coming along with the new song, but it wouldn’t be surprising if that’s in the works as well. Ari isn’t the only superstar guest on Planet Her, obviously SZA is a feature on the already-released “Kiss Me More,” a potential song of the summer contender if I ever heard one. The record also includes The Weeknd, Young Thug, and JID, but we all know the Ari collab is going to be most anticipated.

Stay tuned for the 6/25 drop of Planet Her in just a couple weeks, and any clues Ari or Doja might share along the way.

Last fall, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was fired by the New Yorker for an incident in which he was caught masturbating during a Zoom call with his co-workers. He was also kept off the news network during the 2020 presidential election cycle and up until today, when he was interview by CNN Newsroom co-host Alisyn Camerota.

“In October, you were on a Zoom call with your colleagues from the New Yorker magazine,” she began. “Everyone took a break for several minutes, during which time you were caught masturbating on camera. You were subsequently fired from that job, after 27 years of working there. And you, since then, have been on leave from CNN. Do I have all that right?” After Toobin confirmed that Camerota had it all right, she asked, “To quote Jay Leno, what the hell were you thinking?” (This is a reference to The Tonight Show host’s opening question to Hugh Grant after the actor was arrested for “lewd conduct” with a sex worker.) Toobin awkwardly answered, “Well, obviously I wasn’t thinking very well or very much, and it was something that was inexplicable to me. I think one point — I wouldn’t exactly say in my defense, because nothing is really in my defense — I didn’t think I was on the call. I didn’t think other people could see me.”

Toobin thought he had turned off the camera, which he called “deeply moronic and indefensible. But that is part of the story. I have spent the seven subsequent months, miserable months in my life, I can certainly confess, trying to be a better person.”

Camerota asked Toobin if he’s thought about what it must have been like for the other people on the call who witnessed his actions. “They were shocked and appalled,” he answered. “I think they realized that this was not intended for them. I think they realized that this was something that I would immediately regret, as I certainly did, and it was then — it was that day that I began apologizing. And that is something that I have tried to continue to do both publicly and privately.” Toobin said it was “good to be back [on CNN], and I hope to be a better person off camera as well as on camera.”

This guy caught the entire thing:

You can watch the interview below.

Fast & Furious and Rocket League are two franchises that were made for each other. Both have cars going at incredibly fast speeds and doing stunts that should not be performed by any car in a realistic environment ever. Of course, while the Fast & Furious crew is saving the world from terrorists, or committing heists, Rocket League has cars with rockets strapped to the back playing soccer. Yes, they’re just as absurd as they sound and they’re perfect for each other.

With the new Fast & Furious movie coming out later this month, it’s the perfect opportunity for a crossover. Rocket League and Fast & Furious have crossed over before, with some of the cars being available in Rocket League, and now players will have even more to choose from.

The trailer is a reference to one of the more absurd scenes from the new Fast & Furious movie trailer where the crew has their cars drop from a plane for what we can only assume is a quick entry landing. Of course, in the game, they’ll be landing in an arena to play soccer.

An important question that has to be asked. Which member of the Fast family would be the best at car soccer? The obvious answer is Dominic Toretto, but if Luke Hobbs is participating then there’s a chance the match is never going to end as the two battle it out to be the most powerful soccer car player in the family. The only way this can be solved? Get Hobbs and Dom’s car in the game and battle ’em out. Let’s settle this debate for ourselves.

Following the breakout success of her 2019 global hit “Dance Monkey,” Australian artist Tones And I has continued sharing her sunny music. Now with one EP to her name, Tones And I is officially gearing up for the release of her debut album, Welcome To The Madhouse.

The singer returned Thursday to release the optimistic tune “Cloudy Day.” The single starts off slow as a languid piano offers moody instrumentals. But at the chorus, a group of soulful backup singers join Tones And I to sing about the importance of remaining positive through difficult moments, turning the gloomy song into a snappy and carefree message of hope.

In a statement about her inspiration for “Cloudy Day,” Tones And I said she wrote the track after receiving some much-needed advice from a friend. “After my friend T passed away I was struggling to write any songs that were happy or that I even liked,” the singer said. “I met up with a friend who told me this saying from his late mum – ‘on a cloudy day, look up into the sky and find the sun.’ I knew I wanted to use that as a lyric and the next time I went into the studio I wrote ‘Cloudy Day.’”

About her Welcome To The Madhouse album as a whole, Tones And I detailed some of the themes her music touches on:

“This album for me is very up and down and reflects the forever changing emotions in me. There are songs on the album that were written before ‘Dance Monkey,’ about not knowing if busking was right for me. There are songs about my good friend T passing away and not wanting to deal with those emotions. The ups and downs of life in lock down and the mental challenges / struggles. Some songs make me laugh and some make me cry but there is no running theme or vibe to the album – the songs are unique to how I was feeling the day I wrote them.”

Watch the “Cloudy Day” video above and see the Welcome To The Madhouse cover art and tracklist below.

1. “Welcome To The Madhouse”
2. “Lonely”
3. “Won’t Sleep”
4. “Westside Lobby”
5. “Fly Away”
6. “Sad Songs”
7. “Just A Mess”
8. “Child’s Play”
9. “Not Going Home”
10. “Dark Waters”
11. “Cloudy Day”
12. “You Don’t Know My Name”
13. “Fall Apart”
14. “Bars (RIP T)”

Welcome To The Madhouse is out 6/16 via Elektra. Pre-order it here.

Tones And I is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Kehlani’s run of duets over the past couple of years is bordering on legendary. She’s given the Bay Area a new wedding anthem with Rexx Life Raj, shared the tender “At My Worst” with Pink Sweats, and done heart-tugging joints with Russ and Bryson Tiller. She elevates practically everything she touches, and that includes her latest collaboration with T-Pain, the lush “I Like Dat.” The pair appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform their new hit, giving a swaggering rendition complete with cowboy hats and baggy chaps.

As enjoyable as the collaboration has been, it was nearly consigned to an extensive list of partnerships that never happened thanks to T-Pain’s unawareness of Instagram’s UI. The “Bartender” crooner posted a TikTok video toward the end of April, apologizing to all the celebrities and potential collaborators who reached out to him via Instagram’s DMs as he explained that he didn’t realize that verified accounts’ DMs also get filtered into the “requests” folder. Among those he’d overlooked were Diplo, Fergie, and more. But it turned out to be beneficial, as he later held a town hall with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about potential improvements for the feature. T-Pain also premiered “I Like Dat” during the stream, promising plenty more to come now that he’s realized people have been trying to get in touch with him.

Watch T-Pain and Kehlani perform “I Like Dat” on Jimmy Kimmel Live! above.

With the trailer for Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation out in the wild, He-Man fans have been going nuts for the nostalgia-fueled preview of the limited series spearheaded by Kevin Smith. Pitched as a direct continuation of the original Masters of the Universe cartoon from the ’80s, fans are loving the updated look for the classic series, but that enthusiasm only grew after finally getting to hear one of the more genius casting decisions. Namely, Mark Hamill as Skeletor.

While Hamill is best known for playing Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy, he also has a hardcore following from his voice work as the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series. With Skeletor, Hamill is now voicing another classic villain, and He-Man fans are absolutely losing their minds about it on social media:

Interestingly, Smith revealed to Entertainment Weekly back in May that Hamill almost walked away from voice acting before being offered the Masters of the Universe role. “[Hamill] had talked about wanting to step out of animation, but he was like, ‘When you came at me with Skeletor, how could I say no?’” Judging by the outpouring of love from fans, Hamill made the right call.

Here’s the official synopsis:

After a cataclysmic battle between He-Man and Skeletor, Eternia is fractured and the Guardians of Grayskull are scattered. And after decades of secrets tore them apart, it’s up to Teela to reunite the broken band of heroes, and solve the mystery of the missing Sword of Power in a race against time to restore Eternia and prevent the end of the universe.

Masters of the Universe: Revelation starts streaming July 23 on Netflix.

The 2020-21 NBA season was unlike any other, with a 72-game season in a condensed timeframe, starting in late December and ending in May. There were plenty of rightful complaints about the condensed season, with the league pushing to avoid spilling over into the Olympics at the behest of broadcast partners, and there have been reasonable questions asked about whether the hurried season was a cause for the spike in soft tissue injuries we saw this year.

On top of the Olympics time crunch, the chief reason for hurrying through this season so soon after the Bubble was that the NBA wanted to get back to a normal season timeframe as soon as possible, and it appears they succeeded in doing so just one year after the Bubble. On Thursday, The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported that the league sent all 30 teams a memo with key dates for the 2021-22 season, which will see training camps begin in late September, the regular season start in mid-October, and the Finals end in late June followed by the Draft per usual.

There was some legitimate wonder if the league would shift permanently to a new schedule that avoided more of the NFL and college football season during the Bubble last year, but it’s clear that wasn’t something the league really wanted to do and players voiced their displeasure with the idea of losing the summer as their offseason. The 2020-21 season was seemingly the means to the end in terms of getting back to normal, and it seems the league has succeeded in getting back to where they wanted to be.