Category: News

Fans of St. Vincent won’t have to wait too long for her next album. Street posters promoting the upcoming release, entitled Daddy’s Home, have popped up on Reddit. The advertisement used a 1970s-esque aesthetic that featured Annie Clark herself beside a lengthy statement that provides details for the upcoming effort. “St. Vincent is back with a record of all-new songs. Warm Wurlitzers and wit, glistening guitars and grit, with sleaze and style for days,” it says. “Taking you from uptown to downtown with the artist who makes you expect the unexpected. So sit back, light up, and by all means have that bourbon waiting, because … DADDY’S HOME.”

The lower right corner of the advertisement reveals that the album will arrive on May 14 via Loma Vista. Seeing that some of her fans had caught wind of the poster, the singer acted oblivious to it all and posted a tweet that said, “Nothing to see here.” The upcoming project will be St. Vincent’s first full-length release since 2017’s Masseduction. The news of the upcoming project comes after she confirmed that a new album would arrive in 2021 during an interview with UK magazine Mojo (via r/indieheads on Reddit).

“[The album marks] a tectonic shift. I felt I had gone as far as I could possibly go with angularity, she said. “I was interested in going back to the music I’ve listened to more than any other — Stevie Wonder records from the early ’70s, Sly And The Family Stone. I studied at the feet of those masters.”

You can check out the Daddy’s Home street posters above.

There is, I think, something missing from the WandaVision discourse right now. It wasn’t always missing. In fact, it kind of dominated coverage early on, back when this was all new and fresh. But in the weeks since, people have moved on. They want to talk about the way the show parcels out its plot (“too slow!”) (“actually, it is fine!”), and which appearances by other characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe they would like to see (“Magneto!”) (“Korg!”), and Kathryn Hahn (“Kathryn Hahn!”). This is fine, as all of these are worth discussing at some point in the process, but I do think it is causing us to veer slightly away from the most important thing about the show: WandaVision is still, almost two months into its run, weird as hell.

The weirdness might be wearing off for you at this point if you’ve started to accept what the show is and does, but please, if you have any doubt, try something for me: Explain the show to a person who does not watch it. It’s better if they are, at most, casually familiar with the Marvel movies. And it’s better than that if you, like me, are really only familiar with the characters from the movies. I attempted to do this recently. It went something like this…

“So two of the Avengers, the witch and the robot, who were kind of bad but then good, fell in love, but then the robot died, twice, so now the witch — who is played by the younger sister of the Olsen twins — sort of created a whole fake fictional universe inside a town in New Jersey where the robot is alive again, and each episode of the show is like styled based on a genre of sitcom — Bewitched, Brady Bunch, Modern Family, etc. — and the FBI and various secretive government agencies are outside this forcefield trying to investigate it all and also one of them figured out how to watch the episodes of the show within a show on an old television in the science lab. And that’s when things start getting strange..”

It’s a blast. You’ll sound like you’ve lost all of your mind. And that’s before you even get to the part about Kathryn Hahn playing a secret magical villain who traps Wanda in her demonic basement dungeon after babysitting the rapidly aging twins Wanda and Vision had. The nice thing is that even the characters in the show acknowledge how wild it all is.

This is all very cool to me. I like when things are ambitious and weird, and I especially like it when things are that way when they don’t have to be. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a multibillion-dollar enterprise on its own as well as a lucrative property in the multi-multibillion-dollar Disney portfolio. The instinct when dealing with intellectual property with stratospheric dollar values like this is often to play it safe, to not rock the boat, or, one imagines, to not take your golden goose and twist it into a tribute to sitcoms from before most of the audience was born. The fact that they’re doing it — that they’re even trying it — is pretty neat. I don’t often find myself in the position of congratulating massive conglomerates for artistic choices, but I also don’t often find myself watching a television show targeted at the “comic book fans who are also students of the sitcom format throughout history” genre. It’s an odd position to be in. Not as odd as say, being a civilian inside the MCU and discovering that a famous witch resurrected her robot lover and is keeping him alive inside a manufactured mini-universe that occasionally pays tribute to Malcolm in the Middle, but still, odd.

Does it help that Wanda and Vision are two of the, let’s just say it, lesser Avengers, at least from a lunchbox-and-action-figure standpoint? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. There’s a little less to lose with these two characters and therefore less of a reason to not swing for the fences. But let’s also remember that Marvel turned the Thor franchise over to Taika Waititi and he proceeded to a) make Thor hilarious, and b) make Hulk a big pouty child who gets huffy when he doesn’t get his way. There is history here. Marvel has not been afraid to zig and/or zag for the sake of a good time. Look at my sweet cranky prince.

And getting this weird has paid off for WandaVision in other ways, too, and yes, this is where we discuss the performances on the show. Paul Bettany has nailed every sitcom dad/husband trope they’ve thrown at him. Elizabeth Olsen is carrying the emotional core of the show while also doing spot-on versions of everyone from Mary Tyler Moore to Julie Bowen. Kathryn Hahn — Kathryn Hahn! — has been a delight from the start, playing note-perfect iterations of various nosy neighbors from decades gone by, everything from “1950s housewife who stops by to borrow an ingredient for a recipe as a ruse to snoop around your business” to “Jazzercise-obsessed neighbor who stops by after a workout to say hi as a ruse to snoop around your business.” Even if every other part of the show fell flat, it would be worth it for giving her this kind of playground to run amok inside for 30 minutes a week. I am so excited to see what she does now that she gets to be openly evil for huge chunks of television. I hope she cackles directly into the camera for 25 seconds straight to start the next episode.

I assume the weirdness will dial itself down a bit as the show zooms toward the end of its season. It almost has to, just because the business of explaining how and why all this has happened will decrease the anarchy of it just, like, happening. But let’s not overlook the path the show walked to get there, the one it asked the audience to follow it down, the one that was twisty and bumpy and sometimes featured rascal storks out of nowhere and eventually brought in Randall Park and Kat Dennings to investigate. The whole thing could have been a convoluted mess. I suppose it still could be in its last few episodes. But even if that happens, even if it all falls to pieces in the home stretch, I’ll still appreciate that it made the effort, if only because an ambitious failure is more interesting than a boring success. WandaVision is nothing if not ambitiously, fantastically weird. One day, if they’re taking requests over there, if they’re fully committed to getting goofy, I would still like a show set in the headquarters of a fictional newspaper inside the MCU, one that spans the length of the franchise from the first Iron Man to wherever it ends up, complete with a frazzled reporter attempting to write a front-page story about a big purple alien killing half of the planet’s humans. But for now, as far as big swings go, this will do just fine.

Chicago rapper Ric Wilson has seen his popularity slowly increase for quite some time now. In just the last year, he’s landed collaborations with Terrace Martin, BJ The Chicago Kid, and more, but his latest partnership finds him taking his talents to the other side of the world. Wilson teamed up with Japanese electronic band Chai in their new video for “Maybe Chocolate Chips.”

The video is laced with a collage-like aesthetic that features animated cutouts of Wilson and Chai. The song is an ode to beauty marks and the video uses chocolate chip cookies as a motif, there to represent moles people may find on their face. It’s their attempt to put a positive spin on these beauty marks.

and the constant appearance of chocolate chip cookies throughout the video is proof of the artists’ attempt to put a positive spin on the blemishes some may be insecure about.

Chai’s bassist and vocalist Yuuki spoke about the song’s meaning in a press release. “Things that we want to hold on to, things that we wished went away,” she said. “A lot of things happen as we age and with that for me, is new moles! But I love them! My moles are like the chocolate chips on a cookie, the more you have, the happier you become! and before you know it, you’re an original.”

The track will also appear on the band’s upcoming album, Wink, which arrives on May 21. It’s their first release since 2019’s Punk. As for Ric Wilson, he’s dropped his “Pull A James Baldwin” single last month, which served as the follow up to his 2020 EP, They Call Me Disco, with Terrace Martin.

You can watch the video for “Maybe Chocolate Chip” above.

Before Wednesday, it had been a few weeks since we’d heard from Marjorie Taylor Greene, the new, QAnon-obsessed congresswoman who kicked off her tenure by alienating everyone who wasn’t a die-hard Trumpist. But back into the spotlight she roared. First she forcibly adjourned a vote on the AOC-co-shepherded Equal Rights Act, partly by going on an anti-trans tirade. Then she got owned by AOC herself. A couple hours later it was made public that one of Greene’s close associates admitted to being part of the failed MAGA coup of January 6.

But that wasn’t all: She stepped up a fight with a fellow representative — and office neighbor — in the most bigoted way possible. That colleague is Illinois representative Marie Newman. She has a trans daughter. And when Greene called the pro-LGBTQ+ bill “an attack on God’s creation,” Newman decided to put up a pro-trans flag in her office, which is across the way from hers.

Greene then decided to return in kind — or with the addition of some prejudice. She posted a video of her putting up a sign outsider her office, bearing the words, “There are two genders: Male & Female,” followed by “Trust the science!” in scare quotes.

That Greene would proudly troll a colleague who has a trans child is probably not surprising: Before she was elected she’d written violent things about certain congresspeople. That didn’t mean people weren’t still disgusted with her behavior:

Some questioned her understanding of science.

Some pointed out that she may have too much time on her hands — probably because she was kicked off various committees for her past behavior.

It also seemed like a real HR issue.

One person fixed the sign for her.

Maybe she was trying to cover up her close connection to the storming of the building in which she works.

Although some pointed that she’d probably be in a very different spot in her life had she not been elected to Congress.

And some had enjoyed that respite from hearing from or about her.

(Via The Hill)

R&B duo They. was one of the many artists that appeared on Uproxx‘s Most Anticipated Albums Of Fall 2020 thanks to their second album The Amanda Tape. The project eventually arrived at the end of October and was heralded all over the R&B world, coming in at No. 17 on Uproxx’s Best R&B Albums of 2020 list. Now, the duo looks to extend the life of the project with a brand new remix of “Count Me In” with Kiana Lede.

The new version arrives with a sultry video, as well as an equally impassioned verse from the R&B songstress. They.’s Drew Love leads the way with a verse centered on committing to love, so long as one’s potential partner is all for it. Then Kiana steps forth to lay down the law and reveal her requirements for a relationship. “Only thing that I can trust is a ‘f*ck me’ kinda love,” she sings. “You gon’ f*ck up me standin’ up / So you can’t let me down.”

Along with They., Kiana Lede offered another 2020 highlight in the R&B world. Her moment came much earlier in the year with the April release of her debut album, Kiki. This project also appeared on Uproxx‘s Best R&B Albums of 2020 list at No. 12.

You can watch the “Count Me In” remix video above.

The Oklahoma City Thunder were expected to be the NBA’s worst team this season after they traded away, well, just about everyone this offseason. However, the young Thunder will not go quietly, thanks in large part to the efforts of third-year guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who has been sensational this season.

On Wednesday night, Gilgeous-Alexander set a new career-high against the San Antonio Spurs, scoring 42 points (along with eight rebounds and four assists) in what ended up being a 112-109 win in OKC. He had 38 of those points through the first three quarters, exploding in the third in particular to push the Thunder to the lead.

Late in the fourth quarter, though, it was Luguentz Dort who played the hero, as he finished the night with 16 points, including some key late three-pointers, none moreso than the game-winner from the corner on a beautiful ATO play drawn up by Mark Daigneault.

Al Horford does a great job to push his man up the floor on the denial and then seal him on the lob to the elbow, turning the corner to force help from the weakside and then kicks it to Dort who, while best known for his defensive prowess, was able to drill the three. The win moves OKC into 12th in the West at 13-19, just ahead of the Kings, and while that may not seem wildly impressive, for a team that seemingly moved every veteran from last year’s playoff team and was clearly shifting to a rebuild, the performance on the floor this season, led by SGA but buoyed by some excellent effort each night on both ends from a young team, has been terrific.

After teasing the album for more than two years, 21 Savage and Metro Boomin finally delivered Savage Mode II last October. The project was met with rave reviews and later became the second No. 1 album of their careers. Months later, the two return with a new video for the track “Glock In My Lap.”

The pair begin the video in the midst of thick smoke and beaming red lights. The song’s co-producer, Honorable C.N.O.T.E., eventually joins them and moments later they are approached by a chainsaw-wielding killer, who ends up being no match for the trio. C.N.O.T.E. and Metro pull out their guns to unleash a storm of bullets on their opponent, taking them down with little resistance.

The video is of a piece with previous Savage Mode II videos, which also have a cinematic flourish. “My Dawg” finds the pair taking the roles of menacing businessmen while “Runnin” depicts a rags-to-riches story as they returned to their hometown to show off the Grammy that 21 earned for his 2019 single “A Lot.” The duo also paid homage to the late King Von during a performance of “Runnin’” and “Mr. Right Now” on The Tonight Show, where 21 said, “The world lost a legend.”

Elsewhwere, 21 recently joined YBN Nahmir to throw an outdoor party in their video for “Opp Stoppa.”

Watch the “Glock In My Lap” video above.

Lately Ted Cruz has been a lot like Sideshow Bob relentlessly stepping on rakes. (Or moreso than usual.) His old miserliness towards other states requesting emergency aid got dug up as his own state fell victim to a freak winter storm. He got busted trying to flee on a family vacation. Once he promptly returned home, he got mocked some more, including for trying to blame the catastrophe on the New Green Deal — a thing that hasn’t even been voted on, let alone enacted. We now know one reason he tried to do that: He chatted with a notorious climate change denier.

As per Vice, both Cruz and Texas Governor Greg Abbott held pow-wow sessions with one Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist who’s made a pretty penny saying climate change is “naturally occurring.” He also believes progressive “weaponize” extreme weather tragedies caused by climate change to push their evil socialist agenda. Moreover, he’s a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, whose warm and fuzzy name obscures their longtime aggression towards climate change consensus, and who have reportedly received tens of millions of dollars from Exxon and foundations linked to the right-funding Koch brothers.

And which matchmaker hooked Cruz and Abbott up with this skeptic? Why, Sean Hannity, of course. Bastardi is a frequent guest on Hannity’s show, though it was on The Glenn Beck Program that he admitted he’d educated Cruz and Abbott, both of whom were dragged for trying to pin the blame on wind turbines. The truth was that the majority of blackouts were due to gas wells and pipes being frozen and blocked by cold weather. But it’s so like Ted Cruz to ask the wrong person about science.

(Via Vice)

Bruce Springsteen received some good news on Wednesday. The singer had DWI charges stemming from a November 2020 incident dropped due to a lack of evidence. According to Asbury Park Press, Springsteen told a judge that he consumed two shots of tequila after he pulled over his motorcycle to take pictures with fans at Gateway National Recreation Area in Sandy Hook, New Jersey. He was stopped a short time later by a park ranger and, while he initially refused to take a breathalyzer test, he eventually took one at a ranger station where he registered a blood alcohol content level of .02 — well below the legal limit of .08.

As a result, U.S. Attorney Adam Baker asked a judge to drop the charges of DWI and reckless driving. Hours after the ruling, Springsteen’s Jeep Super Bowl ad was reinstated. The company pulled the ad after TMZ broke the news, saying in a statement that they would wait “until the actual facts can be established” before re-airing it. Now that the charges have been dropped, a representative for the company returned with an update to Variety, saying “Now that the matter has been resolved, we are unpausing the film.”

While the DWI charges were dropped, Springsteen was left to pay a $540 fine for consuming alcohol in a federal park.

There was a lot of anxiety when Disney absorbed Fox, inheriting a wide swath of the entertainment industry and making a corporation already too big somehow even bigger. Among the less important concerns was this: Would they neuter Deadpool, the giddily blue comic book property? Or perhaps worse: Would Deadpool be their only R-rated superhero? So here’s some good news and (possible) bad news: Deadpool will stay adult-friendly. But it looks like, for now at least, their reboot of Blade will not.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, MCU honcho Kevin Feige meant to allay some fans’ fears only to inflame that of others. All MCU movies have been a family friendly-ish PG-13, but he says they’ve “never been held back” by the rating. “If we ever are, then certainly there could be a discussion to be had …. but that just hasn’t been the case yet.”

Thing is, that suggests they haven’t considered an R-rating for their reboot of Blade, which is in the works and which finds two-time Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali stepping into shoes previously occupied by Wesley Snipes. All three of those films, released from the late ‘90s through mid-aughts, were gleefully R-rated. Snipes’ vampire-who-hunts-vampires slashed and diced his way through the undead, none more beautifully than in Guillermo del Toro’s Blade II. But Ali may have to keep the actual blood-letting to a minimum.

Mind you, Feige could have misspoke. He could see the backlash that followed and change his mind. Or maybe Deadpool really will be the exception that proves the PG-13 rule. Nothing’s settled! But once people put two and two together, people on social media were not happy.

Some thought Mahershala Ali deserves better.

One roped in another classic Wesley Snipes buttkicker.

Some were (jokingly) cool with it.

And many were peeved that there’s only one hyperviolent cusser in the MCU.

Meanwhile, Snipes spoke with Uproxx recently about Coming 2 America, and he took the time to say that while he isn’t involved in Marvel’s Blade reboot, he supports them. He also adds that he was only a white belt when he made Blade. “It’s wonderful what we did, but, brother, we’re so much better than we were then,” he told us. He also says he has another movie in the works that he describes as his “Blade-killer.” So watch that space!

(Via THR)