Category: News

Though she shields her daughter’s ears from the raunchy lyrics she raps in her song “WAP,” Cardi B does not shy away from sharing explicit language on Twitter. However, Cardi is now promising to put all that behind her after claiming that she’s been shadowbanned on the the platform.

Shadowbanning is the act of a social media site blocking a user’s content from appearing on their followers’ pages. It’s meant to curb the proliferation of bots and spammers without their knowledge, but active users can also be accidentally targeted. That’s what Cardi B thinks happened to her when a fan account tweeted saying she is “on shadowban again.”

Cardi wasn’t happy about the news, so she decided to take the issue up with Jack Dorsey himself, the CEO of Twitter.

The rapper sent a voice memo to Dorsey, cheekily asking for his forgiveness in a faux-British accent.

Cardi then took it one step further, promising to stop using raunchy language on the site all together.

Cardi isn’t the only rapper who has gotten on Twitter’s bad side this year. Back in October, the platform temporarily banned Kanye West’s account for sharing a journalist’s personal contact information. The rapper was apparently outraged at Forbes chief content officer Randall Lane, who he labeled a “white supremacist” before sharing a screenshot of Lane’s phone number.

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

Of the artists who had big moments in 2020, perhaps none had as impressive a breakout as Alabama rapper Flo Milli. Her debut mixtape, Ho, Why Is You Here? made her an ostensible overnight success, trending on Twitter thanks to its bouncy beats and her flippant rhyme style. However, today she started trending for a different reason, as some fans on the app rediscovered her Beats By Dre television ad from 2020 thanks to a repost and shared their opinions on its muddled messaging.

While the commercial’s tagline of “Flex that clapback” is more of a marketing department failing over anything Flo Milli does, her participation has many befuddled. The ad follows the rapper as she exits an SUV in front of a Confederate statue, regards it for a moment, and dances in the street in front of it to her song “May I.” However, no one is really sure what message is being conveyed and it winds up feeling like the concept was based on exploiting the imagery of the summer uprisings of 2020 while leaving their purpose and demands unfulfilled.

The commercial has already been compared to the 2017 Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner which was accused of trivializing the Black Lives Matter movement. That commercial was pulled after being criticized, while the Beats By Dre ad has been out for two months and is part of a series that also featured rapper Cordae and tennis star Naomi Osaka, which might have helped it fly under the radar for a while. Ironically, it was likely pulling the ad from YouTube that brought it renewed attention on Twitter, where it’s had an ignominious encore.

Unfortunately for Virtue Worldwide, the agency behind the “Flex That” campaign, once it’s on the internet, it’s fair game for roasts and legitimate criticisms alike. Check out some of those above.

30 Coins (HBO, 9:00pm and 10:20 EST) — This Spanish horror series, directed and co-written by Álex de la Iglesia (The Day of the Beast, The Last Circus), premieres with two episodes tonight. Prepare yourself for a spooky show following Father Vergara, who is (get this) not only an exorcist but a boxer and ex-convict. Naturally, he’s also an exiled priest who ends up in a remote Spanish town, where his past comes back in haunting ways, and (of course) there’s a global conspiracy at work.

Headspace Guide to Meditation (Netflix series) — Need a little meditation (in)action? This series will be one of three Headspace projects 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.

The Hustler (ABC, 9:00pm) — This new game show revolves around trivia questions and a collective prize pot that only keeps growing. Secretly, one of the contestants (“the Hustler”) already knows all but must keep his or her identity under wraps until the end.

Asphalt Burning (Netflix film) — Well, this isn’t exactly an enlightened film, but if you need some escapism, feel free to check out this car-enthusiast series about wild racing types who confront the Trollstigen mountain road in Norway via Sweden and Denmark to the Nürburgring in Germany. There’s a drunken bet and a wedding night and a police chase and a dead corpse, and yes, this is a ridiculous movie, but it totally knows it.

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Stacey Abrams, RuPaul Charles, Maren Morris

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Rosario Dawson, Ingrid Andress

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Guest Amy Poehler, Burna Boy, Chris Coleman sits-in with the 8G Band

In case you missed these recent picks:

His Dark Materials (HBO, 9:00pm EST) — The Dust-filled fantasy series is already renewed for a third (and final) season, but before that happens, the second season must (of course) draw to a close. This week, Mrs. Coulter’s confrontation with a formidable foe leads to her finding an important answer, and Lyra and Will’s search for his father ends with a dramatic new status and semi-conclusion.

Cobra Kai: Season 3 — (Netflix series) The good news? This The Karate Kid revival is still as much of an adrenaline shot as the last two rounds. The bad news? It’s also infuriatingly good. After Johnny and Daniel’s combined bad moves contributed heavily to Miguel landing in a hospital bed, Johnny’s looking for redemption. While he does the hard work in the hospital — and Kreese re-takes the dubious reigns of the Cobra Kai dojo, which makes me worried about him instructing Hawk to be even more of an anger-bear monster — Daniel-san heads to Okinawa, where an old rival is ready for him. The soul and fate of every sensei (and their students) are up for grabs.

Dan Le Batard’s tenure with ESPN was fraught with battles between the Miami columnist and management as he became one of the network’s most prominent and beloved radio and TV personalities. However, for all the times he butt heads with his corporate bosses, what he did at ESPN was sensational and he leaves behind one of the most impactful legacies the company has ever seen. Monday was his last day with the four-letter, as he moved on to new opportunities with his radio show and left behind Highly Questionable to Bomani Jones and others.

Le Batard helped bring along an entire new crop of ESPN talent, elevating them beyond what they were maybe initially hired to do at the company and offering them a place to be themselves. It’s the thing that Pablo Torre told me when I profiled he and Bomani while they did High Noon, and that influence was clearly felt by so many others as they posted heartfelt messages on Dan’s influence and importance on social media for his final day.

It was an emotional day for Le Batard, particularly with regards to Highly Questionable, the show he started with his father, Papi, and managed to grow into a staple of the ESPN afternoon block. To close his final show, Dan offered a tearful goodbye and heartfelt thanks to everyone that helped make the show a success and for everyone that tuned in to a family show that was, technically, about sports but in reality was so much more.

It’s clear how much it meant to Dan to be able to do a show with his father and how much he appreciated the opportunities afforded to him at ESPN, even if he didn’t always see eye-to-eye with the people upstairs. The TV show was such a unique take on a sports TV show and was a risk taken by ESPN, one he notes in the video that Papi questioned when they first started. Still, they made it work and now it moves on in the hands of Jones and the cavalcade of up-and-coming stars that Le Batard helped to present to a national audience with HQ and his radio show.

As for the final episode of his radio show on ESPN — as it gets set to move on to a new home — the tone for the final minutes was very different from that emotional Highly Questionable video. It ended as only the Dan Le Batard Show could, with “Freedom” by George Michael playing in full before Greg Cote talked about his toenails, getting cut off by the hard network out with no final goodbyes or anything of the sort.

In their own way, they were both perfect in showing the dichotomy of Le Batard and the shows he built.

Saweetie still has yet to offer fans a release date for her long-awaited debut album Pretty B*tch Music, but has kept fans fed with a steady stream of content including her Icy Life and Icy University YouTube shows. Later this month, though, she’ll make the jump from YouTube to television with her first official acting role on the popular Freeform sitcom Grown-ish. Spun off from the ABC sitcom Black-ish, Grown-ish follows the exploits of eldest Johnson daughter Zooey (portrayed by Yara Shahidi) as she heads off to college.

In Saweetie’s debut role, she’ll play Indigo, one of aspiring stylist Zooey’s celebrity clients alongside Joey Badass, who plays himself. In this scene previewing an interaction between Zooey and Indigo, the client and stylist clash over a music video look, which results in Saweetie giving Shahidi a mischievous look and Shahidi’s character making promises she can’t possibly deliver on — again (just watch the show, you’ll see).

Now in its third season, Grown-ish has provided a popular platform for musicians as well as family-friendly entertainment for young adults. The show’s cast includes R&B duo Chloe X Halle and rapper Diggy Simmons as regulars, Joey Badass in a recurring role playing himself, a soundtrack worthy of such tapped-in shows as Insecure and Power, and even debuted Leikeli47’s “Tic Boom” video.

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

The Buffalo Bills are arguably the hottest team in football, winning the AFC East for the first time in decades and finishing 13-3 for the first time since 1991. A playoff matchup against the Indianapolis Colts looms later this week, but everyone has taken notice of Josh Allen and the Bills officially in the Super Bowl conversation.

That hype has been impossible to miss online, with Bills fans firing off memes and declaring independence for the Great Lakes from the rest of the country, among other things. And even people from The Office universe have gotten in on the act. Actor Andy Buckley, who played Dunder Mifflin CEO David Wallace on the NBC sitcom, is still engaging with Office fans on Twitter long after the show left the air. He still has jokes from the show in his Twitter bio and calls himself the company’s CEO.

And on Sunday, he tweeted that the power of Josh Allen has made him bring back the Buffalo branch of Dunder Mifflin that was eliminated due to downsizing.

The tweet is a joke, of course, as the actor doesn’t have any real power over Dunder Mifflin despite where his character’s narrative arc takes him. But the Bills very good social media team went the extra mile to find footage from the Season 5 episode Company Picnic, where Michael Scott reveals that the Buffalo branch is closing during a skit at the Dunder Mifflin picnic.

The scene is one of the most cringe-worthy from the show’s run, which is saying something considering the horrors of “Diversity Day.” But learning everyone you work with is out of a job from a Michael Scott skit is truly dreadful. Look at these poor people, who are also in canon likely Bills fans.

Even imagining them to be back employed, in the middle of a pandemic and a further struggling paper economy, is a nice thought on top of a fine Bills season. It’s always fun to see an NFL team embrace things like this, and the Bills have done a surprisingly good job of garnering support in a record-setting year for the team in many ways. They’ve worked with Griselda rappers to promote team merchandise, and now they’re undoing some important Office history. Even if it’s not real, fans love this kind of stuff. And lately, there’s a lot to love about the Buffalo Bills.

Meghan McCain has been on maternity leave from The View since before the election (more on that later), but she couldn’t even make it through her first episode back without getting into a shouting match with her co-hosts.

The verbal scuffle broke out after Sunny Hostin said that Donald Trump is “trying to stage a coup” following his leaked phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the president demanded Raffensperger “find” him enough votes to overturn the election. “I don’t think he’s trying to stage a coup,” McCain responded. “I think he’s ranting and pissed off that he’s irrelevant right now… I think people are taking this way too far, he’s a moron.” She’s not wrong, but Trump is setting a dangerous precedent, Hostin countered, because “this is someone who knows that what he is asking for is illegal, yet he continues to ask for it. I think that says that this is an intentional act, that this is a criminal, intentional act to steal an election. It’s a coup.”

McCain told her The View co-stars that she doesn’t buy into the talk of Trump declaring martial law (it won’t do him any good, anyway), as “things like that just scare people,” she said. “The media needs to be more respectful of Trump voters, and I think that’s how we got to this place to begin with. And going forward in 2021, I think that we need to be respectful of the 70 million Americans that for whatever reason did not feel that they could in good faith pull the trigger for President Biden and Vice President Harris.”

Here comes Whoopi!

Whoopi Goldberg argued that Trump backers ought to give respect — by acknowledging that Biden won the election — before they seek it. “Respect the people who voted for Biden and let him take his place!” she said, adding, “This is the bitch of being in a democratic society. This is what it is. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. We lost four years ago now. He’s lost this year. You’re not allowed to kvetch and poop all over this!”

That did not settle things down, as you can see (hear) in the clip above. Be sure to look out for the Baby Yoda behind Whoopi. Only he’s allowed to kvetch and poop.

Also, if you thought McCain was done annoying people, you are mistaken! Much like a man who claims that the only reason he wouldn’t call a woman a “f*cking bitch” is because he has daughters, McCain didn’t realize paid maternity leave should be mandatory until she, herself, had a baby. “I started getting angry that conservatives in particular, given we are the party of family values.. that we are leaving women in this country without the capacity and ability to heal physically [after childbirth],” McCain said, as tweeted by the Huffington Post‘s Emily Peck. “Maybe it takes personal experience sometimes to get on board.” It also helps to, y’know, have empathy for others.

Good to have you back, Meghan.

Now that Christmas has come and gone, holiday songs are no longer dominating the Hot 100 chart like they were last week. While the top ten spots of last week’s chart featured just one non-holiday song, that has been flipped this week, as the one holiday song to make the top ten is Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” Carey’s holiday classic is still doing phenomenally well on the latest charts, though, as it’s still the biggest song in the world: On the new January 9-dated Billboard Global 200 chart, which tracks commercial and listening activity worldwide, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is No. 1.

This is the song’s fourth week at No. 1 on the chart. This week’s chart was based on activity from December 25 to the 31st, so while it included Christmas Day, which was likely a high point in Carey listening, it also encompassed the six days after, which are probably less focused on Christmas music than the lead-up to the big day is.

Christmas music managed to stick around on this week’s Global 200 better than they did on the Hot 100. Aside from Carey’s single, three other Christmas songs made the top ten, including Wham’s “Last Christmas,” Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” and Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock.”

There has been a flurry of NFL news regarding the coaching carousel in the last 24 hours as teams have moved quickly with the regular season now over to get themselves onto the coaching market and begin the process of overhauling their franchise leadership structure.

As such, folks like ESPN’s Adam Schefter are breaking news left and right and it’s never more important than in these moments to take that extra double check at the handle and verification badge when you’re on the hunt for news. This is something that is especially important if you write about sports and even moreso if you, you know, work for ESPN.

That’s why what happened on Monday was rather stunning as ESPN ran a story on the Dolphins firing offensive coordinator Chan Gailey, citing an Adam Schefter report. The problem was, Schefter never tweeted the news, an account @TuaNeedsHelp did with Schefter’s avatar and their name changed to Adam Schefter as a fake and, somehow, ESPN’s news desk picked it up and ran with it.

From there, they had to issue a retraction and apology on the site and social media, which the real Schefter tweeted out.

It is the absolute nightmare scenario for someone working on the news desk, but that it happened at Schefter’s employer makes it all the more strange as ESPN changed its news breaking policy recently to insist its newsbreakers don’t tweet out information if they have not already provided said info to the news desk so they can begin working up a story for the site. In this case, Schefter obviously didn’t file anything and still this got out, which means that policy has since been pushed aside or someone thought Adam had gone rogue.

In any case, this was an unfortunate moment that all of us that work in the business dread happening and I’m sure the person on the desk that did this feels absolutely sick about it. It’s really not a tremendously big deal in the grand scheme, although the celebrating Dolphins fans on Twitter are probably a bit miffed and it likely led to some very uncomfortable calls for Schefter, Gailey, and the Dolphins as this all got sorted out.

Just hours after a taped phone call — one that proved President Trump and his team tried to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into “recalculating votes” in his favor — leaked, the president is now burning bridges with some of his closest allies, all because they won’t support his Electoral College challenge.

Trump, whose disastrous phone call to Georgia’s election officials has some Democrats pushing for another impeachment vote, took to Twitter to single out former GOP buddies, including Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, for not supporting his claims of voter fraud. Cotton, a staunch Trump supporter, issued a statement, in which he predicted this push to take back the presidency would backfire on Republicans. He also refused to let Congress determine the winner of the 2020 Presidential Election.

“The Founders entrusted our elections chiefly to the states — not Congress,” Cotton said. “They entrusted the election of our president to the people, acting through the Electoral College — not Congress.”

Cotton’s stance echoes the position of fellow Republican Senators like Graham and even former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who have publicly opposed the president’s Electoral College Challenge. Trump, for his part, seems to be taking the news that his GOP groupies are finally turning on him in stride — and by “in stride,” we mean with nuclear-level rants on Twitter in which he vows his fanbase will “NEVER FORGET,” which Republicans aren’t falling in line with his last-ditch effort to dismantle democracy.

Trump went on to quote some of his Electoral College challengers like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Ron Johnson, both of whom claim they believe widespread voter fraud impacted the results of the presidential election (though no real proof of that has been offered up at this time).

You know it’s bad when you’ve got to quote-tweet the guy whose wife you callously insulted just a few years ago because he’s one of the only ones left in your camp. It would all be hilariously ironic if it weren’t so damn sad.