Category: News

Pete Davidson was busy during this weekend’s SNL. He sported bleached hair to play Santa’s number-one fan in a parody of Eminem’s “Stan” music video, and also appeared during Weekend Update to rip into the “babies” who are protesting the COVID lockdown measures in his home borough of Staten Island. He focused on one bar, in particular, which declared itself an “autonomous zone” to flaunt mask-wearing measures.

“The bar, shockingly, is in a neighborhood with the second-highest COVID infections in all of New York, so the rule is that they’re only supposed to let people eat or drink outside,” Davidson said about Mac’s Public House. “And the owner said, no one wants to do that because they’ll go out of business. But the argument that people in Staten Island don’t want to drink outside can be disproven by going to literally any Little League game.” It’s a solid joke, but John Tobacco (JOHNNY TOBACCO) was not amused.

A Staten Island activist named Mr. Tobacco tore the SNL star a new one Monday during a news conference over the watering hole called Mac’s Public House — which has been in the news a lot lately for defying COVID closures. Welp, Mr. Tobacco says Pete’s words are a betrayal, considering people in town know him and his fam. He got very personal and even referenced Pete’s father … a firefighter who died on 9/11 in the Twin Towers.

“The ignorance level is so high now that you have mega-millionaires on the national spotlight, like the folks on Saturday Night Live,” Mr. Tobacco said during a press conference on Monday. “And instead of making fun of their friends and the local business owners who are broke and crushed and bankrupt, instead of coming down here as fellow Staten Islanders and standing up for them and bringing a positive light to this thing, what they want to do is go on national TV and humiliate the little man when he’s down. To me, that is quite disgusting.” He then mockingly called Pete “the King of Staten Island.”

Only in New York, baby. You can watch the clip here. Or the full thing below.

(Via TMZ)

Like basically every festival did this year, Montreal fest Osheaga pushed back its 2020 event to 2021, so the 15th anniversary festival is now set to take place between July 31 and August 1 of next year. The full lineup hasn’t been unveiled yet, but the headliners have been announced: Foo Fighters (who were originally set to headline in 2020), Cardi B, and Post Malone.

In a statement announcing the news, festival organizers assured fans that they will be following COVID-19 safety guidelines, writing, “We are aware that we are heading into uncertain times, and we have been working relentlessly behind the scenes to create the ideal circumstances for Osheaga to move ahead without a hitch. Of course, we will follow all COVID-19 guidelines (as they evolve) and continue to update the status should anything change, but we need to plan for the future, because there IS a light at the end of the tunnel! Osheaga is all about spreading joy and fun in a secure environment for everyone to celebrate along with live performances by Foo Fighters, Cardi B, Post Malone, and more!”

The statement continued, “The Osheaga family would like to extend a huge thank you to fans, numerous sponsors and public partners for their continuous support. One thing is certain, when we can all gather and celebrate together again, it is going to be unforgettable! We cannot wait to see you at Osheaga Music and Arts Festival 2021!”

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

Flatbush Zombies have had a stellar few years and have begun work on a project with James Blake, but it looks like the trio’s individual members are looking to broaden their personal horizons as well. The first to branch off is the group’s primary producer, Erick “Arc” Elliott, aka Erick The Architect, as he announces his debut solo project, Future Proof. A five-song EP, Future Proof is due January 22, 2021, and features British rapper Loyle Carner and electronic duo FARR on the lead single, “Let It Go.”

FARR’s Linden Jay is the producer on the project, which will also contain features from Col3trane, Sophie Faith, and Pip Millett. FARR vocalist Roméo contributes the chorus to “Let It Go,” while Carner and Erick trade heartfelt verses over the downtempo beat.

Earlier this year, Flatbush Zombies released their own new EP, Now, More Than Ever, with a well-rounded rollout including the group’s Tiny Desk Concerts debut. They also dropped off the music video for “Afterlife,” one of the songs they co-produced with James Blake.

Loyle Carner, meanwhile, recently released his Madlib-produced single “Yesterday,” kicking off the rollout for the followup to his standout 2019 album, Not Waving, But Drowning.

Future Proof is due January 22.

Following his well-received performance as an older, battle-weary yet still badass Boba Fett on The Mandalorian, Temuera Morrison sat down with The New York Times to talk about how he got a chance to give Star Wars fans version of the character that they’ve been hoping to see for over 40 years.

Morrison’s time with the franchise goes all the way back to 2002’s Attack of the Clones, in which he played Boba’s father, the bounty hunter Jango Fett, who was cloned for the Republic’s clone army. (Boba himself is a clone of Jango, but he ages like a normal human.) While Morrison’s voice has been dubbed into The Empire Strikes Back, officially making him the voice of Boba Fett, he’s never played the character on-screen until The Mandalorian, which was an experience that he couldn’t believe was happening. As for how the heck Boba Fett is still alive after being unceremoniously knocked into the Sarlacc Pit during Return of the Jedi, not even Morrison knows.

“There’s quite a bit of loose ends, and I’m not one of those guys that knows too much about the actual history,” Morrison told the Times. “The fans of ‘Star Wars,’ they have better knowledge of, What’s happened? How can he still be alive? I thought he was stuck in this place? I can find out more on the internet.”

Of course, what happened to Boba Fett between Return of the Jedi and The Mandalorian seems like the perfect material for the recently announced Boba Fett miniseries, which Morrison hopes to be a part of. Although, for now, he’d settle for a chance to connect with the franchise’s biggest star: Baby Yoda.

“I never got to work with him very closely or with the people who move him around,” Morrison said. “I was using him in a not-so-good way, as bait. But hopefully I’ll get to meet him and we can have a little bonding session.”

(Via The New York Times)

It’s pretty wild how after watching every star from Doja Cat to Lil Nas X get dragged for old, offensive, edgelord tweets, stars still don’t delete everything from before they blow up. Even having a fellow group member get censured by fans wasn’t enough to convince JT, recently released from prison and resurgent thanks to the new City Girls album, to delete her old tweets — and now she’s paying the price.

The more lyrical half of the Miami duo deleted her Twitter account after fans resurfaced some of her reckless and offensive tweets from 2015 and before which found her making jokes about everything from R. Kelly’s alleged sexual abuse of teens to Osama Bin Laden. Naturally, there’s a little bigotry sprinkled in, because it wouldn’t be a Twitter controversy if someone wasn’t being a little racist or homophobic. With her account deleted, the original tweets are, of course, gone but they live on in screenshots captured before she reached her limit and hit a hard reset.

For her part, JT seemed unrepentant on Instagram, addressing the controversy in a Story post reading, “Nah all jokes aside stop searching them tweets cause I don’t feel like slapping a bitch back into the same year I was talking about them in!” She also posted a screenshot of what appears to be a new account — one with an apt handle: @fuckyallbitches11.

Still, though, as the commentary continues, this might be a good time for any and all aspiring entertainers to download a Tweet deleting app and get to work. Also, be a better person — it’s not that hard.

Back in 2019, comedians and authors Desus Nice and The Kid Mero were asked to name which guest is at the top of their Desus & Mero wish list. Michelle Obama, Nice responded, “whatever she wants, it’d be a special five-hour episode. We would do everything. I’d be doing her hair, we’d be baking pies, do a hand game, playing double dutch. Just drinking Chardonnay.” The former-First Lady hasn’t appeared on the Showtime series yet, but the Bodega Boys landed a solid fallback guest: Barack Obama.

Obama will appear in a “special half-hour interview episode” of Desus & Mero this Sunday, December 13, as part of the press tour for his new book, A Promised Land. In the preview above, he jokes about not wearing his Timberlands and burns the hosts for their basketball skills in a game against Cory Booker (“Here’s the good news, looks like y’all could play for the Knicks”). The show’s Twitter account previewed the interview by tweeting, “The Bodega Boys just ran into somebody… y’all know him?” (it wasn’t frequent target Jeremy Renner), followed by, “Says he was the 44th President of the United States or something? Idk.” Obama also has a new nickname: Barry the Gawd.

Desus & Mero airs Sunday at 11:05 p.m. EST on Showtime.

The NBA season tips off on December 22 with the league’s marquee Christmas Day slate coming on just the fourth day of the season. The league announced the first half of its schedule on Friday and as such teams know exactly when they’ll be on national TV for the first half of the season.

That may be more important information than usual, as teams begin to plan out how they will take care of their star players, particularly for those teams who played deep into the NBA Bubble in Orlando. With the two month turnaround from the end of the Finals to the start of the season, there has been the expectation, particularly for a team like the Lakers, that they will be plenty cautious with older stars such as LeBron James and resting will be even more prevalent early in this season as guys try to round back into shape.

The league also seems keenly aware of this fact and issued an update to its resting policy adopted in 2017, per Yahoo’s Chris Haynes, that will increase the fine for resting healthy players during a national TV game and on the road — although the latter seems far less important in a season that will start with very few teams having fans in arenas.

This season has been hurried along to start before Christmas almost entirely for the financial windfall that comes from playing those Christmas Day games, which are highly lucrative for the NBA as they are very important for ESPN. That revenue is important to the league and the players, so it’s understandable, as always, that the league would want its best players to be available for national TV games. The issue in this season is with the swift turnaround and shortened camp, which has players at least somewhat concerned about the potential for a similar rash of injuries like the NFL saw early in its season after players went through a brief camp without preseason games and straight into full speed action. The NBA will have a few preseason games, but a shortened camp and quick turnaround for some teams has the attention of everyone.

The impact of this updated policy will likely be minimal, as most players who rest regularly do so with legitimate health reasons behind the decision — for example, Kawhi Leonard is not beholden to the NBA’s policy because he is deemed to be constantly managing a chronic quad injury. This season, you’ll see the likes of Kevin Durant fall into the same category, as he returns from an Achilles injury, and while the Lakers stars played most games last year they were constant presences on the injury report for this reason. That further transparency on minor injuries seems to be the biggest impact of the new policy, as sore and tight muscles now get reported to provide rightful cover for someone sitting out.

Someone will undoubtedly get fined this year as the league makes an example out of any brazen attempts to rest healthy players, but at this point this is old hat and teams know exactly how to work within these guidelines. The only time it becomes tricky is if a team has a back-to-back where both games are nationally televised, but those are few and far between and if a team believes resting on a back-to-back will help them win a championship later, they’ll still happily fork over $100,000 to stick to their plan.

The long-awaited third installment of Kid Cudi’s Man On The Moon trilogy got an update today — the rapper shared a full tracklist and artwork for his project and announced the album will be released this Friday, a relatively short time after the initial announcement.

Over eighteen tracks broken up into four acts, artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Skepta, Pop Smoke and Trippie Red will appear to help Cudi tell his story. He tweeted out the artwork and also posted it on Instagram, crediting artist Sam Spratt with creating the image:

Earlier this year Cudi shared the trailer for the album, and has clearly been hard at work to get the project completed after a decade gap between this third album and the second installment, Man On The Moon II: The Legend Of Mr. Rager released back in 2010. Cudi has often been lauded within hip-hop for bringing mental health struggles to the forefront in his own music, although it’s unclear if the new album will include a similar focus. In the years since Man On The Moon II he’s released albums like Indicud in 2013, Satellite Flight: The Journey To Mother Moon in 2014, Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven in 2015, and Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’ in 2016.

Of course, he also worked on Kids See Ghosts in 2018, a joint release with Kanye West, although Kanye isn’t credited on the latest entry in the trilogy.

With just 23 days left to go, 2020 is showing no signs of stopping its year-long streak of throwing the most random events directly into our faces. So, meet the new hot and sexy Colonel Sanders played by Mario Lopez in a Lifetime Original Mini-Movie, A Recipe for Seduction. (Yup, all of those words are real.) According to Variety, this unholy creation is basically a 15-minute advertisement for KFC, but the good news is there’s free food involved if your body can survive this sensual journey into the world of 11 herbs and spices. To promote social distancing, KFC is away free extra crispy tenders to anyone who makes a $20 order through Uber Eats for lunch during the event.

Here’s the synopsis for A.C. Slater playing a horned up Colonel Sanders because what is reality anymore? Via Lifetime:

As the holidays draw near, a young heiress contends with the affections of a suitor handpicked by her mother. When the handsome chef, Harland Sanders, arrives with his secret fried chicken recipe and a dream, he sets in motion a series of events that unravels the mother’s devious plans. Will our plucky heiress escape to her wintry happily ever after with Harland at her side, or will she cave to the demands of family and duty?

Not only did Lifetime release a trailer for A Recipe for Seduction, but it tweeted out a promotional image featuring Lopez as the beefcake Colonel, and people are losing their minds. “What am I supposed to do with this?” asks a very confused and yet oddly aroused internet.

(Via Lifetime)

Cardi B will have to go to trial over her 2016 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1 after all, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Cardi was sued in 2017 by model Kevin Brophy Jr. over the cover of her debut mixtape which depicted the rapper posing suggestively with a tattooed man. Brophy’s tattoo was apparently photoshopped onto the cover model’s back at Cardi’s direction.

Brophy contends that the distinctive tattoo constitutes misappropriation of his likeness and says it’s used in a “misleading, offensive, humiliating and provocatively sexual way.” Brophy claims that this depicts him in a false light, which in legal terms is a fusion of defamation and privacy invasion. Meanwhile, Cardi’s lawyers argue that the tattoo falls under fair use laws, as it was used “transformatively” since it was copied and pasted onto a different model.

However, Judge Cormac Carney rejected the fair use claim, reasoning, “To constitute a transformative fair use, the revised image must have significant transformative or creative elements to make it something more than mere likeness or imitation.” It’s his view that the tattoo itself wasn’t changed very much — or at all — and that a reasonable jury would be able to identify it from the cover.

The mixtape’s cover artist even admitted that it was the same tattoo. After being paid $50 to make a quick design, he was told to change the original model’s tattoo, Googled “back tattoos,” and overlaid it onto the cover model. Judge Carney did, however, shoot down Brophy’s damages claim. The model believes he’s entitled to over $1,000,000 from the mixtapes streams — nearly all the revenue it generated — as well as over half-a-million dollars from its followup, Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 2 — which features an entirely different cover image.

Carney said the expert Brophy produced brought a nonsensical theory that “if Defendants had not used Plaintiff’s tattoo on the GBMV1 cover, Cardi B would have made no money on the album—at least on the streaming services where the tattoo appears.”

Cardi’s legal troubles don’t stop there. She’s also due to go on trial for an August 2018 incident in which she allegedly assaulted a pair of bartenders at a strip club. She pleaded not guilty to criminal charges, but will also have to fend off civil charges.

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