Category: News

Erica Banks‘ “Buss It” has officially taken over the internet, but as with nearly all viral video trends, the #BussItChallenge wave seemed to be cresting after several weeks of dominance. Then Chloe X Halle got involved — or rather, elder sister Chloe did — and it seems she’s given the challenge new life, as well as once again dropping jaws on Twitter as she continues to shed her squeaky-clean teen singer image.

Chloe, who set off the trending topics a few weeks ago thanks to her antics during a Chloe X Halle livestream performance, turns in a vintage example of the #BussItChallenge in her video, but the video is likely drawing more attention because of who’s not in it: Younger sister Halle, who was cast in the upcoming live-action remake of Disney Renaissance classic The Little Mermaid.

The conflicting schedule caused the sister duo to finally split their Instagram accounts — now, each has their own separate handle, while their joint account continues to post cute group videos like this one — which may well fuel rumors that one or both of the sisters will eventually go solo. While they’ve maintained that they remain a duo for the foreseeable future, the argument can be made that without the constraints of a Disney contract hovering over her, Chloe has leaned into the more “grown-up” posture the duo embraced on their critically hailed 2020 album Ungodly Hour.

Meanwhile, Erica Banks and Nelly are likely grateful for the boost in popularity for the #BussItChallenge. Nelly recently expressed his approval for the challenge, which helps line his pocket thanks to the sample of his 2002 hit “Hot In Herre,” while Banks garners more support for her future endeavors as she looks to follow her 1501 Certified Entertainment labelmate Megan Thee Stallion into the spotlight.

Mike Lindell (a.k.a., “The MyPillow Guy”) recently complained that he’s been dropped by Bed, Bath & Beyond and more vendors because he won’t stop fueling false QAnon conspiracies about the 2020 election being “stolen” from Trump. He still doesn’t seem concerned that there are consequences for telling seditious lies because he appeared on the Victory Channel’s Flashpoint to flat out dare Dominion Voting Systems to sue him for persisting in pushing election-fraud conspiracy theories. Somehow, he’s not afraid of how Dominion’s already sued wacky Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for a whopping $1.3 billion, and he recently revealed that he still talks to Powell multiple times per day.

Regardless of whether Mike Lindell is capable of feeling fear, he’s still talking. In the above video around the 25:00 mark, he tossed out a dare. “Please sue me, Dominion… it’s like the old mafia days when I used to bet football,” Lindell declared. Mediaite has reported that Dominion has sent a cease-and-desist letter as a precursor to a lawsuit over his false and damaging claims to the company, but Lindell doesn’t seem to care.

In the above video, he proceeds to theorize that such a lawsuit would only rush the issue to court, where he believes that he can unveil his bonkers and dangerous conspiracy theories and have them embraced by the court. This did not work out well for Trump’s Legal Strike Force because judges across the U.S. shut down their invalid claims for a lack of evidence and other problems, but Lindell doesn’t seem to accept reality. He’s also still fiercely proud of the failed MAGA coup that left five people (including two police officers) dead, and he posted a video of himself blatantly lying to the QAnon crowd while vowing, “Donald Trump’s gonna be your president for the next years.”

Well, that didn’t happen, obviously. In related and also completely unexpected news, the Daily Mail has reported that Lindell secretly romanced 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Jane Krakowski for nine months. She reportedly broke things off last summer, and if true, wow, bullet dodged.

(Via Mediaite)

Although Kodak Black’s current prison sentence for gun possession was recently commuted by hotel magnate turned failed autocrat Donald Trump, the Florida rapper’s legal troubles are far from over. TMZ reports that the pardon only extended to the sentence he was already serving for falsifying gun registration records and do not extend to his arguably more serious sexual assault charge in South Carolina — and prosecutors say they will continue to pursue the 2016 case, which was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Kodak was charged with criminal sexual conduct in the summer of 2016 after being accused of raping a then-17-year-old fan in a hotel room. He was reportedly banned from South Carolina except to stand trial, and he faces a potential 30-year sentence if convicted. While he did his best to rehab his image while behind bars on unrelated charges and once he was free, he still caught flak multiple times in the intervening years for expressing misogynistic views and walking out of an interview with Hot 97 when he was asked about the case upfront.

He was arrested in 2019 after being arrested driving across the Canadian border with guns and drugs in his car and subsequently sentenced in separate cases to 46 months in prison. He was moved to a new facility after a violent altercation with several guards last year, and was finally released early by the favor-seeking Trump, but it looks like he might still face consequences for at least some of his alleged actions when the sexual misconduct case continues.

Billie Eilish and Rosalía have been teasing a highly-anticipated collaboration since they were spotted in a studio session together in 2019. Rosalía previously said they were nearly done with the single back in April of 2020, but it seems as though the pandemic halted its release. Now, with the song set to premiere in the upcoming episode of HBO Max’s Euphoria, Eilish and Rosalía have teamed up for a captivating visual.

Directed by Nabil, the subdued visual depicts Rosalía and Eilish giving a passionate interpretation of their collaboration’s introspective lyrics. The song is relatively stripped-down compared to both of the musicians’ recent catalogs. Eerie synths open to an atmospheric chorus as the two singers deliver verses, partially in Spanish, about letting go of the past.

Ahead of the visual’s release Rosalía had previously gushed about Eilish’s talent. “She’s an artist with such a strong drive, who knows exactly who she is and what she wants, who pours her soul out when she sings.” Rosalía said. “I’ve been in the studio with a lot of people, but no one has impressed me [the way] she has. She has extreme charisma and extreme passion when she sings.”

Watch Eilish and Rosalía’s “Lo Vas A Olvidar” video above.

Following center Jonas Valanciunas entering the NBA’s COVID-19 protocols over the weekend and the postponement of the Grizzlies’ Wednesday night game against Portland, the NBA on Thursday morning announced that Memphis’ next three games had also been postponed.

The league said this came because of unavailable players as well as additional contact tracing that will leave Memphis without a full roster for at least the next week. The Grizzlies’ next three games were scheduled to come against the Trail Blazers (again) followed by a back-to-back against the Kings.

As ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski noted on Twitter, the league’s announcement does not definitively state that Memphis is without the minimum eight players required by the NBA to play a game.

That could mean the NBA is tightening its protocols to keep team outbreaks better under control rather than forcing teams onto the court if they have eight players, or it could in all honesty just mean the NBA’s release was not particularly specific.

Either way, this is a blow for Memphis, which had been on a five-game winning streak and building momentum with the return of Ja Morant to the lineup. The Grizzlies now face a pause similar to that of the Wizards as they await the recovery and continued negative tests of their players and staff ahead of a Jan. 27 home game against the Bulls that is now the soonest Memphis could be back on the court.

Fox and Friends kicked off the first full day of Joe Biden‘s presidency by suddenly becoming very concerned about the COVID-19 vaccination distribution issues, after months of defending Donald Trump‘s failed attempts to curb the pandemic. Host Steve Doocy was particularly incensed with Amazon after the company wrote a letter to the Biden administration shortly after the inauguration and offered its services to speed up the vaccine distribution process.

“We are prepared to leverage our operations, IT, & communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts,” Amazon’s Consumer Services CEO Dave Clark wrote on Wednesday (via NBC News). “Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately in the fight against COVID-19, and we stand ready to assist you in this effort.”

In an angry rant, Doocy criticized Amazon for waiting until Biden took office to help with vaccine distribution. “Can you imagine if Amazon stepped up a month and a half ago and offered to do this, how many millions more people would be vaccinated today?” the Fox and Friends host asked. Ainsley Einhardt also chimed in to say, “It makes me sad, actually.”

You can watch the Fox and Friends segment below:

However, Doocy and the rest of the Fox and Friends hosts’ stance says nothing of how the Trump administration reportedly didn’t have a vaccine distribution plan, which has left Biden’s COVID team with the unenviable task of starting at square one. “There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” a source told CNN. It could easily be argued that Amazon didn’t wait to offer assistance in an effort to undermine Trump, and the company simply waited for an administration that would actually do something.

(Via Bobby Lewis on Twitter)

Obviously, the most discussed American politician of the day yesterday was Joe Biden, considering that he was inaugurated as this nation’s latest president. A close second, though, may have been Bernie Sanders, who instantly became a meme thanks to a photo of him at the inauguration. In the picture, he’s sitting in a folding chair with his legs crossed, cozy-mitten-covered hands on his lap, mask on his face, and sporting an overall displeased-seeming demeanor.

As of this post, #BernieSanders is the top trending topic on Twitter, and everybody has been getting in on the fun of placing him in a variety of humorous environments. The Haim sisters took a shot at making a Sanders meme as well, and they delivered.

They shared a photo of him edited onto their Days Are Gone album art, which was a natural fit considering the sisters are already sitting on folding chairs in the image. They caption their post by declaring Sanders an honorary Haim, writing, “y’all always knew @BernieSanders was the 4th sis.”

For those who want to give Sanders memeing a shot, a kind Twitter user made a version of the Bernie image with a transparent background, making it easier to pop him into any image you desire:

While the host and band of The Tonight Show celebrated Questlove’s birthday with some thoughtful presents last night, musical guest Playboi Carti gave a raucous performance of his Whole Lotta Red cut “Slay3r.” Taking over a warehouse with an elaborate skeletal stage, Carti performed the first half of the song while hanging from a ladder, then took to the floor to rage out as pyrotechnics went off around him. He was joined on the stage not only by his band, but also by a group of models, who preened in classic punk looks to give Carti more of the edge and aesthetic he’s become known for.

Carti’s rollout for Whole Lotta Red was certainly as punk as it gets. After repeatedly teasing the album for nearly two years, he finally put it out with only a week’s warning on Christmas — typically, a day musicians avoid releasing music since fewer folks are online to download, stream, or purchase their new projects. That, combined with the delays, could have been a dealbreaker — especially with all the trolling his fellow artists did over them. However, the strategy paid off for him, earning him his first No. 1 debut. In an effort to keep that success coming, he announced that a deluxe version is on the way.

Watch Carti’s “Slay3r” performance above.

Following the release of last year’s aptly-titled EP This Place Sucks Ass, Toronto pop punk outfit Pup got together to showcase their wildly energetic stage presence on NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series. Performing a set from the comfort of vocalist Stefan Babcock’s apartment, Pup ripped through a handful of their raucous tunes.

After kicking off their set with their EP’s opener “Rot,” Babcock introduced the band by acknowledging their noisiness. “My neighbors hate us, and I don’t blame them,” he said. Then, the band swiftly moved into a rendition of their catchy tunes “Kids,” “Reservoir,” and “Scorpion Hill.”

Ahead of the release of their 2020 EP, Pup sat down with Uproxx’s Steven Hyden to discuss the making of their acclaimed LP Morbid Stuff. Describing how they managed to turn their existential dread into neatly packaged pop punk tunes, Pup’s drummer Zack Mykula said, “We still want to be a fun band, and that’s always been the goal. It’s like, you gotta pick your times to be the overbearing doomsayer, and I think we’re pretty good at juxtaposing those elements.” Babcock continued, “I don’t want leave anyone on a hopeless note. The whole point of this band is to feel like you can do something positive with something that is absolute garbage.”

Watch Pup’s NPR Tiny Desk concert above.

This Place Sucks is out now via BMG. Get it here.

He may not look it, but The Roots‘ drummer Questlove recently turned 50 years old, celebrating his milestone with his bandmate Black Thought and the host of The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon. While there was some banter, with Jimmy teasingly asking Quest whether he thought the cheering in New York City yesterday morning was for him (it was for Biden’s inauguration and the welcome end of the Trump administration), the discussion quickly turned to the presentation of some thoughtful gifts — pun intended — from Quest’s compadres.

Tariq went first, explaining the origins of his gift to Quest with what seemed at first to be an unrelated story. However, after explaining the tattoo design he’d been working on for himself, he said that his research had brought the perfect design for his gift: a ruby encrusted lapel pin in the shape of a heart — taken from the Ghanaian Adinkra symbol representing “sankofa,” a word that can be translated as “returning to one’s roots” and inspired by Quest’s love of heart-shaped broaches. When Jimmy jokes he didn’t receive anything as fancy on his birthday, Thought reminded him, “You didn’t turn 50.” He also read the inscription from the back of the pin, which the audience couldn’t see: “From Organix to Endgame and beyond, brotherly love,” incorporating the titles of the band’s first and planned final albums and their Philadelphia origins.

Jimmy, not to be outdone, had a huge box brought onstage and reveled in Quest’s facial breakdown as the drummer realized what the present was: Morris Day’s mirror from Prince’s Purple Rain film, signed by The Time’s frontman himself. Quest’s jaw dropped; being one of music’s biggest music geeks, the piece of ephemera clearly short-circuited his brain. Hopefully, whoever keeps house will remember not to wipe that autograph off.

You can watch Quest’s hilarious reaction above.