Category: News

As Tracy Chapman’s copyright infringement lawsuit against Nicki Minaj came to a close, the two sides apparently came to a settlement without going to court. Nicki agreed to pay Chapman $450,000 for her unlicensed sample of “Baby Can I Hold You” in the leaked song “Sorry,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. In September, U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips determined that Nicki had a fair use right to use “Baby Can I Hold You” to create “Sorry,” but not to distribute it, setting up a separate trial to determine responsibility for the leak.

On Thursday, California court documents became public revealing the results of the judgment, which nixes the second trial. Chapman agreed to accept the settlement amount, avoiding trial costs should the trial have fallen in Nicki’s favor. Chapman initially sued the rapper in 2018, after blocking her clearance request for “Sorry” ahead of the release of Nicki’s fourth studio album Queen. Incidentally, Nicki’s revelation that Chapman had denied her request led to a days-long campaign of social media harassment from her Barbz, which probably didn’t help her case much.

Although the song was ultimately removed from the Queen tracklist, someone leaked it online and Funkmaster Flex played the leak on the radio, prompting Chapman’s lawsuit to block it from official release or public performances. Now that this case is in her rearview, though, Nicki still faces other legal issues. Earlier this week, TMZ reported Nicki had been sued for $200 million by another Queens rapper claiming that he’d written the entirety of her song “Rich Sex.”

After the now-infamous picture of Senator Josh Hawley fist-pumping the throng of Donald Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol building, and his continued dedication to their cause by attempting to overturn the 2020 election results even after violent assault, Simon and Schuster canceled Hawley’s book The Tyranny of Big Tech that was due out in June. “We take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom,” the publisher wrote in a statement.

Less than an hour after the news hit, Hawley fired back at Simon and Schuster by calling them part of the “woke mob” and labeling their decision as “Orwellian” in a statement on Twitter. “Let me just be clear, this is not just a contract dispute. This is a direct assault on the first amendment.” While numerous voices on social media noted that Hawley has a law degree from Yale and should be well aware that book deals are not covered by the first amendment, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went right to the point and blasted Hawley for being more concerned with a book deal than inciting a norm-shattering assault on democracy that left five people dead. AOC also echoed calls for Hawley’s expulsion from the Senate.

“You fist-pumped insurrectionists and baselessly attacked our elections,” AOC tweeted. “Your actions fueled a riot and you fundraised in the chaos. Five people are dead. Even your GOP colleagues have distanced from your acts. Yet here you are crying over a book deal. You should be expelled.”

You can see AOC’s tweet below:

In related news, former U.S. Sen. John C. Danforth is now regretting his past act of helping to get Josh Hawley elected. In an interview with the St. Louis Dispatch, Danforth said, “Supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life.”

(Via Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter)

Florida’s Marco Rubio might be the most talented senator out there when it comes to self-owning on Twitter. He’s been dragged on many occasions, including his complaint that the gun control debate has “infected” the younger generation, for “honoring” the late John Lewis with a photo of Elijah Cummings, and for pearl-clutching over an incoming Biden staffer calling the GOP “f*ckers.” Well, people realized that Rubio is, in fact, upset about negative replies when he shut them off earlier this week. He was blasted as “spineless” for doing it, so he reactivated his replies on Friday and was immediately dragged over what he posted about the MAGA coup.

One can hardly be surprised at a few things here: (1) An elected official limiting the ways that people (including his own constituents) can talk to him is not a great look, so people were prone to pounce on him once they could reply; (2) The content of the video Rubio posted is antagonistic, even though Rubio maintains a calm demeanor during his 4-minute speech. He denounced the riot at the Capitol but didn’t call out Trump or colleagues Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. Instead, Rubio decried a “double standard” in how the left is allowed to protest, so he’s refusing to see the difference between protests and a riot that left five people, including a police officer, dead. He also blamed the media, along with “political correctness and social media censorship and identity politics and this cult of wokeness.” And he called for reflection while noting that the GOP’s in a deflated state in 2021:

“For those of us on the center right of American politics, now is the time that calls for honest reflection. It wasn’t long ago that we controlled the House, the Senate, and and four years later, we’ve lost all three. We need to reflect on why this is happening. Because this country needs a viable and attractive alternative to the agenda of the radical left.”

The video did not go over well. After only one hour, Rubio got ratio’ed, meaning that people had piled on with a greater number of replies than likes or retweets.

Rubio’s “meditation” on the state of the GOP clearly missed its mark. Actually, it’s not clear where he was aiming, since people are extremely upset with his inability to recognize that BLM protests go quite differently than MAGA coup attempts. And some are calling for Rubio to resign after enabling Trump for four years.

Rubio will be up for U.S. Senate reelection in 2022.

A few weeks ago, a Miley Cyrus song called “Mary Jane” leaked, and now she has shared the whole thing. It turns out the tune, an emotional ballad that features production from Mike Will Made-It, is called “Mary Jane 5EVR” and is about the death of Cyrus’ dog, the titular Mary Jane.

Cyrus posted the track on Instagram and set it to a gallery of photos of Mary Jane. She captioned her post, “I wrote this song in Malibu years ago on a piano in a house that no longer exists. About my dog Mary Jane who is also gone now. A lot has changed over time. Mostly me. Music is my medicine. This song revolves around loss & heartache. Which I am currently experiencing after Mary Jane’s passing. MJ was a true queen. She wore her grace, dignity & kindness like a crown. She will never be forgotten and will forever be missed. To know her is to love her. It has been my honor being her mom and best friend.”

This actually isn’t the first song Cyrus has written about a deceased pet. On “Pablow The Blowfish,” from her 2015 album Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, she sings of the titular water-dweller, “How can I love someone I never touched? / You lived under the water, but I love you so much / You never been on land, and you never seen the sky / You don’t know what a cloud is / Why does everything I love have to die?”

Listen to “Mary Jane 5EVR” above.

After a long year, 2021 is finally here, bringing with it new episodes of Indiecast. To kick off the first episode of the new year, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen are discussing musical trends that took hold in the 2010’s that might begin to fade out as we settle into the 2020’s. It’s impossible to predict what the next decade is going to look like, musically, but we can only hope that it will be something genuinely new and exciting.

Before Hyden and Cohen dig in for a typical episode of news, reviews, and more, the duo want to take some time to declare their New Year’s Resolutions. In this week’s episode, Hyden and Cohen are digging through the things they want to see more of (and less of) in 2021, upcoming new albums from The War On Drugs, Father John Misty, Foxing, The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, and more.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Hyden has been enjoying At The Moonbase, the surprise new album from Slaughter Beach, Dog. Cohen, on the other hand, can’t get enough of the band Curve.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 21 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. Stay up to date and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

If asked which ’90s syndicated series I would rather watch, Xena: Warrior Princess or Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, I will always pick Xena, especially now that Hercules star Kevin Sorbo has revealed himself to be a far-right conspiracy nut and Xena‘s Lucy Lawless is, well, she’s Lucy Lawless. She rules! The two actors virtually reunited, sort of (what is this, a crossover episode?), this week when Lawless corrected Sorbo after he tweeted nonsense about how it was antifa who broke into the Capitol, not MAGA rioters.

About that:

The conspiracy theory comes from the conservative Washington Times, which published an article on Wednesday claiming a facial recognition software company identified left-wing agitators in the frenzied terrorist mob. The only problem? The company referenced in the story says the Washington Times made it up and issued a cease-and-desist order against the publication. The Washington Times then unpublished the article.

But that didn’t stop Sorbo from sharing the theory that the Trump-loving goons in this photo are actually “Leftist agitators disguised as Trump supporters,” adding, “They don’t look like patriots to me…” That’s because they’re not, Lawless responded. “They are not Patriots, They are your flying monkeys, homegrown terrorists, QAnon actors,” she wrote. “They are the douchebags that go out and do the evil bidding of people like you who like to wind them up like toys and let them do their worst.” Lawless, who referred to Sorbo as “Peanut,” added the hashtags #keepingYourFilthyHandsclean and #enabler.

This GIF feels appropriate:

While The Weeknd was understandably peeved about not securing any Grammy nominations for this year, he’s getting ready to do something that no other Grammy nominee will do in 2021: headline the Super Bowl halftime show. The big game is set to go down on February 7, and ahead of then, The Weeknd has teamed with Pepsi (the sponsor of the halftime show) for a new ad to get fans hyped about the performance.

The 60-second spot shows people at home and in various other everyday environments singing along to “Blinding Lights.” It ends with The Weeknd himself pulling up to a toll gate, much to the surprise of the employee in the booth. Variety notes this is “the first time the musician at the center of the [halftime show] has taken part in a Pepsi ad campaign in advance of the effort.”

Meanwhile, Pepsi also revealed that they have decided to not air any ads for their flagship drink during the big game this year (that’s not to say that other PepsiCo brands like Gatorade and Doritos won’t have a commercial presence).

Todd Kaplan, Pepsi’s vice president of marketing, told Variety, “We are going to double down on our existing 12 minutes in the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show in the middle of the Super Bowl, and we are going to build it out like we have never built it out before.” He said that while Super Bowl advertisers “are talking and fighting for 30 seconds” of attention, Pepsi wants “to focus our efforts on making [the halftime show] a critical moment for the brand.” Kaplan also said of the game and halftime show, “There is a desire for a bit of escapism and surface-level entertainment, not being constantly reminded [of the pandemic]. We think that’s the role that sports and music play for us, providing that sense of normalcy.”

Check out the new ad above.

A few months ago was the 20th anniversary of Linkin Park’s 2000 album Hybrid Theory, a defining nu-metal album that launched Linkin Park to stardom. The band celebrated last year with multiple new deluxe editions, but Linkin Park is still looking to honor the album in 2021. They did so today by dropping a new remix of Hybrid Theory‘s lead single, “One Step Closer,” from 100 Gecs.

100 Gecs’ reinterpretation of the song is also sort of a cover, as the duo offers new vocal contributions as well as new instrumentation. As one might expect, a new frenetic electronic energy is introduced to the song, and 100 Gecs’ sensibilities play into the song wonderfully.

Linkin Park indicated that this remix is the first in a series of new reworks in the style of their Reanimation remix album, writing on social media, “Keeping the #HT20 celebration going into 2021 will be a series of new reanimated tracks. Part of the spirit of Reanimation was to take the Hybrid Theory songs that people knew so well, and let innovative artists flip them in ways nobody expected.”

Listen to “One Step Closer (100 Gecs Reanimation)” above.

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

Netflix knew that 2021 wouldn’t instantly be better than 2020, so they made sure to keep the content coming while social distancing guidelines are still the best idea out there. This week’s lineup has a little of everything. Not only is Nic Cage hosting an entertaining series that digs into your favorite (and unfavorite) curse words, but there’s a meditation-guiding show to help you find some serenity. In case you want some serious drama, there’s an Oscar-tipped performance from Vanessa Kirby on tap as well, and let’s not forget about the spooky series that digs into the possibility of an afterlife.

Here’s everything else coming to (and leaving) the streaming platform this week.

History of Swear Words (Netflix series streaming 1/5)

A Nic Cage series? Yes please. A Nic Cage series where he teaches us lessons about expletives? Give it to me now. Cage hosts here with an array of guests — including Jim Jefferies, Zainab Johnson, Nick Offerman, Sarah Silverman, Baron Vaughn, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Joel Kim Booster, DeRay Davis, Open Mike Eagle, Nikki Glaser, Patti Harrison, London Hughes — to dive deep into his proudly profane stance. Over the course of six episodes, you’ll learn about the origins of “F*ck,” “Sh*t,” “B*tch,” “D*ck,” “Pu**y,” and “Damn.” Alright!

Pieces of a Woman (Netflix film streaming 1/7)

Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf star as Martha and Sean, respectively, who experience an unimaginable tragedy when a home birth goes wrong. Martha then undertakes a yearlong odyssey while coping with grief and her relationship with Sean, which (unsurprisingly) strains under the pressure of their mutual loss. Meanwhile, Ellen Burstyn plays her overbearing mom, and Molly Parker plays the publicly shamed midwife. Look for this movie (and the performances) to be a big awards contender.

Surviving Death (Netflix series streaming 1/6)

Dive into this investigative series about whether or not the afterlife exists and whether death is really the end of life. As one might expect, this show provides firsthand accounts from those who have come close to (and even experienced) the D word to provide an illuminating view of the ultimate question that plagues us. The show’s based upon Leslie Kean’s best-selling book of the same name.

Headspace Guide to Meditation (Netflix series streaming 1/1)

Need a little meditation (in)action? This series will be one of three Headspace projects (produced by Vox Media Studios) in 2021, and this one will lead with eight episodes that will teach viewers different mindfulness techniques to learn the surprisingly difficult practices — including stress, sleep, and letting go — of how to meditate. It’s damn hard to do, especially in our current age where information never stops coming our way, but this series might help convince everyone that meditation can be both accessible and… easy? Not to mention interactive.

Here’s a full list of what’s been added in the last week:

Avail. 1/1
Cobra Kai: Season 3
Dream Home Makeover: Season 2
Headspace Guide to Meditation
The Minimalists: Less Is Now
Monarca: Season 2
What Happened to Mr. Cha?
17 Again
30 Minutes or Less
Abby Hatcher: Season 1
Blue Streak
Bonnie and Clyde
Can’t Hardly Wait
Catch Me If You Can
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Cool Hand Luke
The Creative Brain
The Departed
Enter the Dragon
Gimme Shelter
Good Hair
Goodfellas
Gothika
The Haunted Hathaways: Seasons 1-2
Into the Wild
Julie & Julia
Mud
Mystic Pizza
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
Eddie Murphy: Raw
Sex and the City: The Movie
Sex and the City 2
Sherlock Holmes
Striptease
Superbad
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

Avail. 1/2
Asphalt Burning

Avail. 1/5
Gabby’s Dollhouse
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
History of Swear Words
LA’s Finest: Season 1
¡Nailed It! México: Season 3

Avail. 1/6
Ratones Paranoicos: The Band that Rocked Argentina
Surviving Death
Tony Parker: The Final Shot

Avail. 1/7
Pieces of a Woman

Avail. 1/8
Charming
The Idhun Chronicles: Part 2
Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons: Season 5
Lupin
Mighty Little Bheem: Kite Festival
Pretend It’s a City
Stuck Apart

And here’s what’s leaving next week, so it’s your last chance:

Leaving 1/8
Mary Poppins Returns

Leaving 1/14
Haven: Seasons 1-5
The Master

Leaving 1/15
A Serious Man
Dallas Buyers Club
Waco: Limited Series

Leaving 1/16
Friday Night Tykes: Seasons 1-4

Dvsn arguably had one of the best R&B albums in 2020 with A Muse In Their Feelings. The effort was their first in almost three years, but it was beyond worth the wait. However, the patience of their supporters will be rewarded to a further extent as the duo announced a new album with the arrival of their new single, “Use Somebody.” Upon listening to the song, it may have an extremely familiar tune and that’s because it interpolates Kings Of Leon’s 2008 hits: “Sex On Fire” and “Use Somebody,” both from their Only By The Night album. Dvsn’s first track of the year came with the news that their fourth album, Amusing Her Feeling, a play on the title of their third album, would drop next week.

A Muse In Their Feelings is a 16-track effort that sees the Toronto duo comprised of singer Daniel Day and producer Ninteen85 step out of their comfort zone and give their fans tracks that veered into the dancehall and New Orleans bounce lanes. They put out the excellent album with help from Partynextdoor, Ty Dolla Sign, Jessie Reyez, Summer Walker, and more. With that chapter in the past, fans can look forward to Amusing Her Feeling which arrives next week January 15.

You can listen to “Use Somebody” above.

Amusing Her Feeling is out 01/15 via OVO/Warner.

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