Category: News

Whether it’s the latest Marvel movie or the Olympics, Leslie Jones’ Twitter feed offers the only commentary you need. The former-SNL cast member and current-Supermarket Sweep host has recently taken to filming cable news shows on her phone and offering her two cents, like this video of an MSNBC guest discussing Trump pardoning his kids where she joked, “Seriously, what f*cking void did you go to to make this goddamn video? I understand keeping it simple, but goddamn, son.” Many of Jones’ tweets are about Zoom backgrounds, but occasionally, there’s a good ol’ fashioned takedown, too.

On Wednesday night, she tweeted, “This is F*CKING EMBARRASSING,” along with a clip of MSNBC documenting the numerous lies that Donald Trump pushed about the election in a new 46-minute (!) video. “You know how sad you look, you f*cking stupid f*cking child?” Jones said about the president. “You up here with a chart you can’t even read. He can’t even read this chart. He don’t know what the fuck that chart say… Listen, let me tell you something. I can’t believe anybody that’s a fan of me can’t look at this stupid motherf*cker and not be f*cking embarrassed. I’m so f*cking embarrassed. Can we cut off access to the other countries that are seeing this type of sh*t?”

It’s fun to read; it’s even better to watch.

This one’s good, too.

Beef in rap is almost inevitable, it seems. Cardi B feels like that has been especially true in regards to her during her relatively fresh reign at the top of hip-hop. It turns out that Cardi is tired of being pitted against other female rappers, and she discussed that in a new interview with Billboard, which named her their Woman Of The Year.

In the profile, Cardi said, “When female artists are rising, you don’t have to put one down because the others are rising. Every single time a female rapper comes out, people wanna start fake beef. Maybe because they don’t see me [with other women] as often as people want to.”

Cardi was also asked about expectations for female artists, and she responded:

“I don’t want to be like, ‘Oh, female artists, we have it hard.’ But we do f*cking be having it mad hard! I could be bumping to one b*tch’s music, and the next day, people are telling you, ‘Oh, this girl is better than Cardi. She’s gonna end Cardi.’ I hate that y’all do that. Why do you want me to argue and not like this girl? N****s be out here doing the most, being disrespectful, [but] just the other day, I was getting chewed up because I said the R-word. Like, how you gonna cancel me for calling myself retarded? They want you to be Mother Teresa, they want you to put out music, and they want you to look a certain way. It’s like, ‘Y’all gotta chill — I’m just a regular-degular b*tch, man.’”

Read the full feature here.

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

Blackpink has been at the forefront of music for most of the year as the group’s 2020 return left fans beyond excited for a full-length project from them. Supporters of teh group got just what they wanted in early October as they shared their official debut release, The Album. It arrived with them fully solidifying their presence on American soil with appearances on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Now, Blackpink aims to bring their fans from all over the world together for a livestream YouTube event set to occur at the end of the month.

The group will take their talents to YouTube for “The Show,” a livestream event that the group has labeled as the “first of its kind.” “We wanted to end the year with something very special for our Blinks who have been waiting so patiently for us,” Blackpink said in a statement according to Consequence Of Sound. “We hope everyone can comfortably enjoy our first-ever livestream concert THE SHOW at home and hopefully join in on some special perks we’ve prepared for those who join our channel. Overall we’re super excited to share this fun moment with our blinks and we can’t wait till THE SHOW.”

Tickets for the events come in two tiers. The first set of tickets is classified as “standard” and grants access to the livestream, a broadcast, and custom emojis for the price of $29.99. The “plus” set of tickets includes behind the scenes content as well as everything in the standard package for $39.99.

Fans can watch a trailer for The Show in the video above.

The free speech social media site Parler has blossomed into a mecca for conservatives, especially, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential loss. One problem, though: The service’s moderation is so limited that it’s in danger of being overrun by pornography. A new report by The Washington Post says that it’s in danger of becoming a “magnet for pornographers, escort services and online sex merchants,” which bait innocent users with hashtags like #keepamericasexy and #milfsfortrump2020.

In fact it was one such hashtag — namely #sexytrumpgirl — that shocked Parler users one recent night, when, the Post reports, “images of topless women and links to hardcore pornography websites appeared at a rapid-fire rate, often more than one per minute.” One minute a Trump fan could be ranting about disproven voter fraud, the next they could be sold, let’s say, a Jared-themed dildo.

Pornography has had a hard time with social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, which ban sexually explicit images. Parler used to ban it, too, but they recently revised their rules to allow anything that’s legal — including sexually explicit images of adults. Users can find pornography if they seek it, but there is now an influx of merchants. And unlike Twitter, which prevents excessive rapid posting, Parler has no such ban, leading to the #sexytrumpgirl headache.

While Parler wants to keep their open-door policy — it’s why conservatives have been flocking there in the first place — they also, says a higher-up, “don’t want to be spammed with pornographic content.” Meanwhile a professor of computer science at University of California at Berkeley had a grim warning for the service. “When you say, ‘We don’t moderate content,’ you are inviting this content,” he said, adding, “My prediction is they will be overrun with this stuff.”

(Via The Washington Post)

Thompson High School and Auburn High School met on Wednesday night in Tuscaloosa for the Alabama 7A state title game, and while this typically wouldn’t be national news, the way the game ended was one of the wildest finishes in any football game this season.

Auburn led 28-19 with a minute to play after taking some knees at midfield and electing to punt the ball away to leave Thompson with a full field to go down and no timeouts to work with. However, disaster struck as Thompson was able to block the punt and return it for a touchdown (with the punter taking too much time before letting the kick go), making it a two-point game and opening the door for a sensational comeback, provided they could get an onside kick — which they naturally executed to perfection. From there, they got a pair of pass interference penalties to put them in field goal range, where they hit the game winner at the buzzer to win 29-28 and pick up a state championship.

It is an incredible sequence of special teams plays for a high school team, as all phases executed perfectly from the punt block unit to the onside kick team to the field goal unit in the span of one minute. For Auburn, it’s a horrific way to lose a game that, once you start taking knees, you feel has to be firmly in your hands. It’s a reminder that a game (at least one within a couple of scores) is never over until the final whistle and that you have to execute all the way to the end, because if you don’t the other team might and steal away a state title in the process.

Pharrell is continuing his support of minority-owned businesses with a brand new initiative entitled “Black Ambition,” whose goal is to reduce the wealth gap by helping out those who sometimes lack the access afforded to other groups. Pharrell explained the inspiration for the initiative in a statement.

“Recent events and tragedies have illustrated the always existent stark divisions in the American experience, and while entrepreneurship has long been a tenet of the American dream, marginalized people have faced long-standing barriers to success,” Pharrell said. “With Black Ambition, the goal is to help strengthen the pipeline of talented entrepreneurs and close the opportunity and wealth gaps derived from limited access to capital and resources.”

The Black Ambition initiative unveiled two awards for minority business owners. The first is The Black Ambition Prize, which aims to “provide a platform for eligible entrepreneurs to access growth capital, pitch feedback, and mentorship.” It awards mentorship and up to $1,000,000 in funding to Black or Latinx entrepreneurs who are in the fields of consumer products and services, design, healthcare, and tech.

The second award is The Black Ambition HBCU Prize, which “will help to fund high potential ideas with our capital that can spark and support the next generation of successful entrepreneurs.” Business owners and their companies will have the chance to win up to $50,000 in funding in one area and $250,000 in the other, with the opportunity for mentorship available in both. In order to qualify, applicants must be a current HBCU undergraduate or graduate student or have attended an HBCU within the past two years.

For the last month, Donald Trump’s legal team has been going around the nation’s courts, alleging widespread voter fraud. And they’ve lost every case apart from one. Not only that, they’ve inspired widespread mockery, from their bungled press conferences to their typo-ridden lawsuits. They can’t do anything right. The same day one “Elite Strike Force” lawyer actually told Republicans to not vote in Georgia’s Senate runoff, a star witness at a hearing in Michigan captivated social media — and, of course, not in a good way.

According to The Detroit News, Trump team attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis attended a Michigan House Oversight Committee hearing, during which they pushed the same discredited claims that have been shot down everywhere else. They also had guests.

One of them — a blonde woman who appeared to a poll watcher — made many bold claims, including that one country’s poll book was off by “over 100,000.” When Representative Steve Johnson patiently explained that they weren’t seeing any evidence of that in the poll books, she replied, “What did you guys to do to…do something crazy to it?” She claimed that she “signed something saying if I’m wrong I can go to prison.” She was sarcastic, she was aggressive, she was condescending, she slurred her speech. Social media was in love.

Others were also convinced she’d had something before testifying.

Many simply could not believe what they were seeing.

Some pointed out that even Rudy “Melting Goo” Giuliani had to calm her down at one point.

Many weren’t sure if they weren’t actually watching sketch comedy.

Or maybe she was former SNL star-turned-far right loon Victoria Jackson.

A Rick and Morty writer claimed it was actually her.

While the woman inspired a lot of jokes, some sort of admired her.

Then again, at least she didn’t say racist stuff, as another witness did.

In any case, Trump appears to be no closer to conceding than he was almost a month ago, and not his team nor their army of poll watchers has offered any concrete evidence. Until he does, all any sensible person can do is laugh at them.

Spotify seems to have a new solution for artists that may find themselves caught in copyright infringement cases. The streaming platform is currently working on a patent that lets songwriters know if they have plagiarized another artist’s work. According to Music Business Worldwide, Spotify’s proposed Plagiarism Risk Detector And Interface allows for an artist’s music sheet — which includes the song’s melody, chords, and lyrics — to be put into an AI system that is “trained on a plurality of preexisting encoded lead sheets” to determine a “similarity value” towards other bodies of work in the database.

The tool, which is credited in part to AI expert François Pachet, includes a GUI that “provides dynamic visual feedback in substantially real-time” and lets artists discover elements of possible plagiarism and allow them to fix it as they work on their song. The patent’s filing also says that it “would allow artists to generate lead sheets more quickly and confidently by detecting and providing visual feedback as to whether any aspect of the work has a probability of being deemed plagiaristic.”

The streaming platform says the upcoming product will be more efficient and precise than previous products like the Music Plagiarism Detection System which is based on similarities in melodies and the Audio Forensics Meets Music Information Retrieval – A Toolbox For Inspection Of Music Plagiarism which uses sampling, melody, and rhythm to detect possible plagiarism.

(via Music Business Worldwide)

It was hailed as a worthy successor to the beloved ’80s original, but, sadly, the reboot of DuckTales is coming to an end, and only after three seasons. According to Deadline, Disney XD has decided not to pursue a fourth spin with unimaginably wealthy Scrooge McDuck and his precocious nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Hopefully this doesn’t affect Seth Rogen’s proposed redo of Darkwing Duck, another Disney staple from the same era.

Mind you, the original DuckTales didn’t last much longer. After debuting in 1987, the weekday afternoon show only four seasons, with a theatrical movie, Treasure of the Lost Lamp, squeezed in between the third and final gos. The revival began in 2017, and it did a do-over, starting anew with Scotsduck Scrooge forced to babysit his nephews, and quickly realizing that they inspire him to go off on daring explorations and get into assorted mischief. The cast was big, too, with David Tenant doing Scrooge and other roles voiced by Danny Pudi, Ben Schwartz, Bobby Moynihan, and Kate Micucci. It even gave a more sizable role to Donald Duck.

You can still watch its 65 episodes, which may be well shy of the original’s cool 100, but that’s nothing to sneeze at. May Scrooge McDuck get to do laps in his money bin another day.

(Via Deadline)

For the first time in nearly four years, Joyner Lucas and Logic reunited, teaming up for their track “Isis” off the former’s debut album, ADHD. The collaboration came after a long beef, which started when the rappers did not see eye to eye after a disagreement they had while working on Tech N9ne’s 2016 track “Sriracha.” Lucas stopped by The Breakfast Club, where he was asked about the origins of their feud.

“I think I was jealous of him,” Joyner said after Charlamagne Tha God asked him the question. “But I think… The reason why I say that, though, is because I felt like where he was at at the time is where I wanted to be so much.” He explained how Royce Da 5’9″ helped him patch things up with Logic. “I had called that man because I had an epiphany,” he said. “I had got to a certain place, in which people started expecting things of me. And people started expecting that I just do sh*t. People that I didn’t really know like that. And, I lost a lot of people and it clicked. I said everything that I accused this guy of or I was [jealous] of, it’s happening to me. I know how it feels and it sucks.”

Joyner also revealed what he said to Logic to heal the rift, saying, “I felt like I was jealous of you because you were doing everything I wanted to do. You were dope, you were lyrical. You was ripping down tours. You had all these relationships with all these artists that I loved and respected. And, I really idolized you and I didn’t even realize how much I did.”

You can watch Joyner’s conversation on The Breakfast Club above.