Category: News

Two years after the release of her acclaimed debut album Flow State, Tash Sultana signaled the beginning of a new era in recent months with a handful of playful singles. Now, the Australian singer returns with an official announcement of her sophomore album alongside a jazzy new single.

Tash’s “Willow Tree” was recorded with rising artist Jerome Farah and offers a reflection on the importance of mindfulness, something the singer has been trying to do more of lately. “I didn’t realize that I needed to create a space and home for myself to feel like a person again,” Tash said about the song. “I just went inward and found a really peaceful place and wrote an album, and I feel really happy with it.”

“Willow Tree,” along with her previous single “Greed,” will arrive on Tash’s impending sophomore album Terra Firma. Speaking about the album’s meaning as a whole, Tash said no good will ever come from comparing your success to somebody else’s:

“There ain’t no fast pass up the mountain and you’ve got to clock the hours in to achieve the things you want in life. You can’t just skip the entire middle section of your journey to try and rush to the finish line. Whatever that may be for you. There is no use comparing yourself to someone else’s success. It’s your time when it’s meant to be and it’s only meant to be if you get up day and night and strive for the things you want. No one’s going to serve it to you on a golden platter, you’ve got to get it yourself.”

Listen to “Willow Tree” above.

Terra Firma is out 2/19/2021 via Mom + Pop. Pre-order it here.

Even before he became president, Donald Trump was known for his unhindered use of Twitter. He and his many press secretaries have lauded the president’s frequently used and abused social media account as his way of connecting directly with the people, but if you scroll through his feed, it usually seems more like a venue for him to brag, bully people, and air his grievances. Oh, and lie a whole bunch.

Then there is Steak-umm, the anti-Trump Twitter account. And by “anti-Trump” I don’t mean against Trump, but rather the opposite of Trump. Instead of griping and sharing falsehoods that constantly need fact-checking while being the single biggest source of coronavirus misinformation, Steak-umm use their account to share helpful tips for avoiding misinformation in the midst of a confusing pandemic, to explain psychological concepts like “cognitive dissonance” and “dualism,” and to encourage people to really examine and think about things before sharing them.

In other words, Trump tweets conspiracy theories while Steak-umm tweets about how to not fall for conspiracy theories.

That’s right, this wisdom is coming from a frozen sliced steak brand. Welcome to 2020, y’all.

I mean, bestill my credible-information-and-verifiable-data-loving heart.

This whole thread ^^ is worth reading. It’s pinned to the top of their Twitter page.

Meanwhile:

(Side note: The one and only thing POTUS and Steak-umm seem to share is a complete disregard for capitalization rules. Trump capitalizes words totally randomly, while Steak-umm capitalizes pretty much nothing. It’s a world gone mad, I say. As a former English teacher, this haphazard capitalizing is all just incredibly painful.)

Anyway, moving on…this tweet right here is 100% truth, as evidenced by every comment section on the internet:

Scientists have even taken notice of the company’s Twitter account as it tackles coronavirus misinformation.

Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York, is one of many infectious disease experts studying the coronavirus. She learned about Steak-umm’s tweets through an online group of fellow scientists.

“It’s really important that people are being informed and are able to look for good information themselves — but also to remember that we’re all going through this together, and we’re all human beings, and we’re all experiencing a really difficult time,” she told Business Insider. “It’s very unusual to see the corporate account for a brand of frozen processed meat sort of marrying those two concepts.”

But that’s exactly what Steak-umm does. While some of us feel tempted to take a “Why are people such idiots?!” approach when we see people acting like fools in a pandemic, Steak-umm explains the answer to that question in a way that doesn’t blame, but encourages thoughtful processing of information. (Which of course will be ignored or rejected by said idiots, but it sure makes some of us feel good to see such eloquence and intelligence, especially in the cesspool of social media.)

Also unlike the Tweeter-in-Chief, Steak-umm is remarkably self-aware and able to provide an honest and transparent reflection of the benefits it derives from tweeting the way it does.

Like, whoa.

And they’re right. People are buying their product because they like their social media statements.

Not all of Steak-umm’s tweets are filled with civilization-saving gems of wisdom, of course. I mean, there’s this:

And this silliness, beeflings.

They also get cute with certain spellings, always writing the word “meet” as “meat” and “mistake” as “misteak.”

If you don’t usually buy your meat in the frozen convenience food section and aren’t familiar with Steak-umm, this tweet describes the brand perfectly:

Thank you, Steak-umm (and their social media manager, Nathan), for fighting the good fight and adding something of value to the Twitter world.

Steak-umm bless, indeed.

Netflix’s The Crown will introduce two new adversarial pairings in Season 4, and a recently released teaser previewed the upcoming Princess Diana/Prince Charles debacle. The new trailer, however, zeroes in on what happens when there are “two women running the show,” which prompts Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, to cluck his tongue while Queen Elizabeth remarks that it might be exactly what England needs. That’s the introduction to Gillian Anderson as Prime Minister Margaret “Iron Lady” Thatcher, who will square off against the long-standing sensibilities of Olivia Colman’s royal incarnation.

The season picks up in the late 1970s with both the House of Windsor and Downing Street feeling fissures begin to appear, some as a direct result of Thatcher’s divisive policies as the country heads into the Falklands War. And of course, there’s a lot more brewing underneath the surface while the country’s press relishes highlighting the tensions between the two women, who have a lot in common but many differences as well. Gillian Anderson is grabbing onto those distinctive tones (which were partially down to throat lozenges) coming out of Thatcher’s mouth, and Colman’s pulling off the apparently-neutral-but-manuevering-behind-the-scenes vibe quite well.

Meanwhile, the Windsors would love to distract the public with a fairytale by marrying off 30-year-old Prince Charles (Josh Charles) to someone not-scandalous, which is where Emma Corrin’s Princess Diana comes into play. We all realize how that ended up (tragically), but at least we can guess that Helena Bonham Carter will continue to lighten the mood (relatively speaking) as the bawdy Princess Margaret.

The Crown Season 4 will stream on November 15.

Lil Baby may not have come up big at the recent 2020 BET Hip-Hop Awards but he isn’t sweating it. Instead, he says he remains focused on getting paid — which has been the theme of much of his social media activity over the past year.

While fans were seemingly miffed when Lil Baby wasn’t selected for Hip-Hop Artist of the Year — Megan Thee Stallion won that award instead — the Atlanta rapper merely quoted his own verse from Gunna’s “Blindfold” in an Instagram post: “I Like Getting Millions, Ain Trippin About Awards.”

His response was mirrored by his frequent collaborator DaBaby, who could arguably be said to have had an even worse night at the Awards. Despite being the most-nominated artist with 12 nods, including double nominations for Album Of The Year, he didn’t take home a single trophy. However, he was unfazed, tweeting his congratulations to the winners and telling them they deserved the awards.

Lil Baby isn’t one for tweeting all that much but when he does, it’s usually about money. Earlier this year, he joked that he’d be offended if anyone offered less that $100,000 for a feature, which may explain why he responded to Kanye’s claim that he turned down a collab. He was understandably much more upset over Walmart offering fake 4PF chains on its website since he wouldn’t get his cut. Maybe if BET Hip-Hop Awards came with a check, he’d be a little more invested.

Check out Uproxx’s review for his fan-favorite album, My Turn, here.

Since the WNBA was added into NBA 2K20, women’s basketball fans and hoops gamers alike have wanted more customization, more realism, and overall an experience in the game that was more like the real WNBA. In NBA 2K21‘s latest Next-Gen update, that’s exactly what’s coming.

2K has effectively created an entire structure around “The W,” which encompasses a GM Mode, Playoff Mode, online leagues, MyPlayer options for women’s players, and a 3-on-3 game like what WNBA players have competed in during FIBA and Olympics competitions in recent years.

“One of our main design goals for The W was to allow you to experience the career of a WNBA player, both on and off the court,” said 2K Senior Producer Felicia Steenhouse in a press release. “The women of the WNBA are more than athletes and are defining professional sports as we know it in real-time.”

Maybe the coolest part about all these updates is how 2K didn’t just plug in female MyPlayers and other updated options into the structure that already existed in NBA 2K21. Instead, the developers created a whole new world within the game for the W and all the gamers who want to experience it in the virtual world in a real way for the first time.

As the WNBA gets more focus among basketball fans, the gaming community is taking notice as well, giving 2K lovers a chance to experience the league and its culture in NBA 2K21.

You’re probably not in the mood to watch a movie about COVID-19, for obvious reasons. But could I interest you in a movie about COVID-23 that stars Hot Archie from Riverdale and Demi Moore and Alexandra Daddario and Bradley Whitford and is produced by the king of kabooms, Michael Bay? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

Directed by Adam Mason, Songbird takes place in the near-future during the 215th week of lockdown. “Infected Americans are ripped from their homes and forced into quarantine camps known as Q-Zones, from which there is no escape, as a few brave souls fight back against the forces of oppression,” the official plot description reads. Here’s more:

“Amid this dystopian landscape, a fearless courier, Nico (KJ Apa), who’s immune to the deadly pathogen, finds hope and love with Sara (Sofia Carson), though her lockdown prohibits them from physical contact. When Sara is believed to have become infected, Nico races desperately across the barren streets of L.A. in search of the only thing that can save her from imprisonment… or worse.”

Songbird was the first full-length movie to film in Los Angeles during the pandemic, so if nothing else, now you know an answer to a future-bar trivia question. Assuming bars ever… Actually, that’s too depressing to think about. Instead, watch the trailer for Songbird, which comes out soon. That should cheer you up!

In recent months, many musicians have repeatedly denied the Trump campaign’s requests to use their songs at rallies. Neil Young finally sued the campaign after Trump repeatedly played his music despite the singer’s protests, and Leonard Cohen’s estate got lawyers involved when the RNC used “Hallelujah” during their event. John Fogerty has similarly denied Trump permission to use his song “Fortunate Son” at various rallies, but the president continues to defy his cease-and-desist orders. Now, Fogerty has found a clever way to get back at the Trump campaign.

Fogerty joined TikTok in order to spread his message across generations. For his first video, the Creedence Clearwater Revival singer tapped his granddaughter to appear in the clip to offer insight into the meaning behind “Fortunate Son.” “Today, with school being online, I thought I would give a little history lesson,” she said. “My grandpa wrote a song called ‘Fortunate Son.’ He was a veteran. It was about himself and others who were forced to fight a war they didn’t support, yet around him were others of privilege and upper class who didn’t have to. My generation can’t let this happen again. Hit it, grandpa!”

The camera then pans to Fogerty on guitar, who delivers an passionate rendition of the song’s intro. The performance stood as a subtle dig at the president, who has reportedly avoided the military draft five different times throughout his life.

Watch Fogerty’s TikTok performance of “Fortunate Son” above.

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

Trump apparently holds some bizarre disdain for Billie Eilish. According to documents released Thursday, Democratic lawmakers are accusing the Trump administration of using millions of taxpayer dollars for a partisan celebrity ad campaign, which also purposefully excluded Eilish from being involved.

The Washington Post reports the administration was approved to use $250 million to launch an ad campaign designed to “defeat despair and inspire hope” amid the pandemic. Democratic lawmakers were on board, until they found out Trump was barring the involvement of celebrities who had been publicly against his policies, or have ever supported either gay marriage or Barack Obama.

Trump apparently hired contractors to vet certain celebrities for the campaign and had 274 on the list for consideration. But according to the report, when Eilish’s name came up, those working on the campaign immediately shot down the idea. Apparently, one member of the team said they are against Eilish because she’s “not a Trump supporter” and is “destroying our country and everything we care about.”

The report doesn’t clarify what exactly the administration thinks Eilish is destroying, but it did specify other celebrities who didn’t make the cut. Jennifer Lopez was turned down due to her critique of Trump’s immigration policies during her Super Bowl halftime show and George Lopez was nixed from the project due to “previous concerns regarding his comments regarding the President.”

Ten celebrities were reportedly approved for the ad campaign and the list is quite eclectic. Among those chosen were Dennis Quaid, television doctor Dr. Oz, Billy Ray Cyrus, Miranda Lambert, Garth Brooks, Dwyane Wade. and Enrique Iglesias.

Travis Pastrana is as well-versed about injuries as any human who isn’t a doctor. The way he rattles off the injuries he’s suffered and still deals with is rather incredible, and he knows exactly how they’re all connected and impact how he feels on a day-to-day basis.

Dealing with pain has been something the action sports superstar has had to figure out since he was 16 years old, and now, he’s getting into that space as the co-founder of Just Live, a CBD company that he’s starting along with three other top athletes: Klay Thompson, Alex Morgan, and Paul Rodriguez. For Pastrana, this is something extremely personal to him, as he explained passionately to Uproxx this week to discuss the brand’s launch and why he got involved.

How did you come to be involved with Just Live and when did you decide that CBD was something you wanted to get into, not just as an ambassador, but something you wanted to be part of launching an actual brand?

Well, to be honest, I didn’t know a lot about it and considered CBD or anything like that a drug, and was always kind of a little anti-[CBD]. But I’ve seen some of my friends go downhill with painkillers and sleeping pills and everything they tried to do to mask the pain of, even … so many of my friends were military and they came back with injuries or had whatever was going on, back pain and bulging discs and whatever, but they couldn’t sleep through the night. So they start taking sleeping pills and then they got drowsy during the day, and then it kind of escalated to pain medication and other substances just trying to mask pain to be able to do what they loved to do. Or, the option B for them was to stop doing everything, but then depression set in. For me I saw a lot of downside to the modern medicine ways they could kind of accomplish what they wanted to.

And, for me, we had a CBD sponsor for the Nitro Circus tour and I was making a last ditch effort trying to make a race that my orthopedic, he said, ‘Godspeed, you’ve got too much swelling.’ I had basically a big bruise, for lack of a better term, but a subdermal hematoma of the right quadriceps, and I couldn’t bend my leg far enough to get to the foot peg and if you did, it would explode the quad. And with the artery right there they couldn’t drain it. So I listened to some of the skaters and BMXers on tour and started taking some CBD and it was incredible. Maybe it was timing, maybe it was whatever, but all of a sudden I’m sleeping better through the night, I’m not waking up. I stopped taking Advil. Since I was about 16 years old, I have a lot of stomach issues because of the Advil consumption. Taking six Advil a night to sleep, waking up at 1 or 2 in the morning and taking six more, and that’s been since I was 16.

So, even the over the counter medicine, the anti-inflammatories and everything, you can’t keep taking them. In order to keep doing what I wanted to do, you either have to take stuff that’s worse for your body that masks the pain more, or you just have to quit doing what you love. I started talking with other athletes and this was going on more and more. There was depression setting in for the guys that are trying to get off that stuff.

My dad after his third back surgery a little over a year ago now, he called me up – you know, military family, it’s a little different than most families – he said, ‘Hey, I love ya, I love where I am in life, but if this next surgery doesn’t work I’m gonna put a bullet in my head. It’s not that I don’t appreciate everything, I just refuse to live in the fog of painkillers and I physically am not tough enough to live without it.’ And we started him on some CBD and he, still being the East Coast guy that he is, was like, ‘Well it helped me sleep a little bit, and my mind’s clearing up, but I mean, it’s not that helpful. But I’ve got my life kind of sorted back out.’ And I’m like, well, if that means you’re, instead of sleeping 1 to 2 hours a night, you’re getting through the night. The inflammation’s going down, at that point I was like, literally CBD, hippie medicine, has saved my dad’s life, who was the last person on earth you’d expect to take it. But at the end of the day there’s so many people out there that are at their wit’s end, that may or may not of been an athlete – could be construction, could be a desk job, could be anything – and they’re just tired of living in pain and they turn to stuff that’s very unhealthy and leads to stuff down the wrong direction.

As we were talking about this, we realized there were so many people that tried CBD and there’s so many upstart brands and the quality’s not there. So they’re like, ‘I tried CBD and it didn’t work. I have to go back to painkillers.’ And it’s like, well it does work, the stuff you’re using is not quality enough. It’s not getting that inflammation, that relief and helping you calm down and giving the stress relief that CBD is capable of without the downsides of THC. So, for me, it was really important to not only get the message out about CBD and it’s health benefits for inflammation and peace of mind, it’s also that’s something that if you take the right CBD it’ll work, and if you take stuff that doesn’t work you’ll never try it again. Unfortunately that’s deterred people from going a route that’s much healthier. Sorry for the super long-winded explanation.

No, that was great. You mentioned that you talked to a bunch of different athletes, and the four that are at the head of this are from all over the sports spectrum from Klay to Alex to Paul to yourself. How did you link up with them and what did you hear from them about their experiences as well?

Yeah, P-Rod has been a friend for a really long time. I’ve known Alex a little bit, more through my wife Lindsey, who is a big advocate of the Women’s Sports Foundation. Klay was a little newer for me, obviously Alex had known Klay, but just kind of coming together and starting this. And P-Rod was kind of last one to the table, but also the person I was happiest to bring because he’s a guy, they’re all great athletes, but coming from action sports that’s more where my ties are. But with Alex, the cool part about this with her is, as a mom, just to let people know – like all athletes are taking CBD, and some folks are like, ‘Well, I’m not an athlete, why would I need to be 10 percent better?’

And that’s why we came up with the name. It’s Just Live. If you want to live healthy and live a more stress-free life, if you want to live to your fullest, this is going to help you. It doesn’t matter if you have back pain because you’ve sat at a desk your whole life. Sitting for me is the most difficult thing I do. Being inactive is where my inflammation and my back starts shooting pain down from my sciatic nerve down to both fused SI joints, but you don’t have to be an athlete to benefit from it.

So I think that was what was really cool about Alex, is she reaches a completely different group of not only female athletes, but of moms. To have some of us being not necessarily out of our sports, per se, but past our prime and it’s not about, at least for me, and performing at the highest physical level, it’s about being able to sit in a car and be strapped in for 16 to 18 hours at a time in a rally and be able to feel my feet. To be able to go through a rally and not be distracted. To be able to listen to every note my co-driver is telling me so I don’t make those silly errors. So I think that’s what’s so important to me, and then talking with folks who are in construction or truck drivers or anything, it’s hard to do your job when you’re in pain. And when you’re in pain, what you think is, well I’m off, I’m gonna go drink this away. Or I’m gonna go take some Percocets. It’s not, hey, I’m gonna work out because I feel pretty good, or I’m gonna go play this sport I love and haven’t been able to in awhile because my knee hurts too much or the arthritis is too bad.

This gives people who want to get back active enough relief that they can start doing physical therapy. Like my dad, it wasn’t that he wanted a free ride or anything, he just wanted to be able to get back to the point where he could start working out so he could start helping the muscles strengthened so he could start getting his back stronger and start sleeping better. The CBD allowed him to do that.

I know one of the stated goals of this is to bring attention to the issues of opiods and painkillers and those things, and this is something that’s been going on for awhile in sports, but really in the last decade is something athletes are really starting to become aware of. When did you start to recognize in action sports the issue of painkillers and the issues of guys trying to self-medicate and over-medicating their pain?

You don’t realize it’s an issue until it’s already too late and it’s already affected your body, your life, your income, your everything you do. And that’s what’s tough. If you look at even in Nitro Circus the two guys, and not athletes, but the two guys who have run Nitro Circus both kind of got into … they came from an action sports background or surfing or motorcycles or snowboarding and that kind of stuff. And being in a desk job all the time, they were just trying to get better rest. And it went downhill so fast for our CEOs and at the time both of them had to basically restart their lives, and that’s something that’s tough. And you realize it more as you get older how many people this effects.

I had a couple friends actually overdose on painkillers, and that’s not something you hear a lot of, but besides being expensive and ruining your life, it’s actually killing people. So for me, it’s something that, you know, being someone that has a lot of injuries, it concerns me. I want to be able to continue riding my dirt bike. I want to continue riding mountain bikes. I want to, when my daughters say they want to go for a run – well that might be a far stretch for me – but I want to be in good enough shape to at least be able to go with them. To go mountain biking and do the things that I love and share it with my kids, and that is honestly the biggest reason that I took this initiative if you will. Because, basically, I want to be able to help people understand there’s a solution out there.

I want other people who are in pain to live their fullest life and to be able to do it with their kids. If it was just a money grab, there’s a lot of products out there to instead of putting in money you could be taking money. But at the end of the day I think this is something that needs to be out there, that people need to know there’s a reliable source they can go to that’s the highest quality possible to where, if CBD is going to work for them, this is the company they can trust.

Killer Mike is as well-known for his activism and outspoken opinions as he is for his raps, making him the ideal subject for a 60-second documentary that doubles as a commercial for Cadillac detailing the importance of community organizing. Mike speaks throughout the ad as a local artist adds him to a colorful mural celebrating his positive impact. Explaining the lasting effect prior Black Atlantans had on creating opportunities for the generations after them, Mike compares their community investment to an acorn that grows into an oak tree.

Mike’s recently made efforts to leave his own acorns for future generations of Black business owners, launching a digital banking platform called Greenwood in order to provide savings and checking accounts to customers who might not ordinarily have access to them and meeting with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to discuss ways to benefit Black businesses in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While some took issue with the latter action, calling it nothing more than a photo-op for the Governor, Mike defended himself by noting the need to form coalitions with other political factions, if only to present the ideas in the hopes of implementation. For his efforts in recent years, he was awarded the Billboard Change Maker Award at the 2020 Billboard Music Awards by for Georgia House Representative Stacey Abrams.

Watch the full 60-second documentary above.