As protests against police brutality continued to take place throughout the weekend, one planned protest for Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old EMT shot to death by Louisville Metro police officers serving a warrant at her apartment, has drawn criticism for being organized under false pretenses.

Montgomery, Alabama rapper Chika, who lives in Los Angeles, has been a fixture at several of the LA-based protests over the past two weeks, even getting detained during one and documenting the experience after slipping out of her zip ties. She had words for Compton rapper YG, though, after the latter revealed that he was shooting the video for his new song “FTP” during the most recent protest in Hollywood on Sunday. “Shooting a music video while Breonna Taylor’s killers are still walking the streets is f*cking disgusting,” she wrote.

Later on the same day, Chika filmed a video for Instagram detailing her issues with the video shoot. “You don’t say on a flyer, ‘This is a vigil, bring flowers, bring candles…’ You don’t use this moment to shoot a music video… Everything that we’ve been doing march-wise has working because of the way that we showed up. The way that we know what we are fighting for, the way that we are informed. This today was not that. If you saw YG’s name on a poster and you showed up because you saw YG’s name on a poster, you’re f*cked because the lives lost was not enough to do that for you.”

Meanwhile, YG himself reacted to the backlash on his own Instagram, writing, “For anyone out there talking I don’t question your advocacy and don’t think you should question mine.” For YG, “The real story here is me and Black Lives Matter brought out 50,000 people today to peacefully protest and unite for change. I wanted to document that so when they hear this song and think we are reckless and violent they see a peaceful protest of all different people coming together for a common cause. That is history. That is breaking down these stereotypes on our people and our neighborhoods.” He also admonished his critics, “All of us protesting are on the same side here..instead of questioning each other’s activism we should be directing that energy at the cops and the government and helping to create the change we want to see. Stay focused and stop that social media judgement without knowing facts and hurting a cause we all a part of. We got a real enemy and it ain’t each other.”

Watch Chika’s video calling out YG and see his response above.

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

Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Terry Crews recently found a warm reception on Twitter after his remarks on the death of George Floyd (for which Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder). That thread began with Crews stating that Floyd’s death “forced me to search my heart to find out what more I can do, as a human being, as a citizen, and more specifically as a Black man,” which led to a declaration that he wanted to “make further amends to black women.” A few days later, Crews is feeling an intense backlash after a “Black supremacy” tweet amid another weekend of protests against police brutality. It’s a swift turn of events that’s been compounded by Crews’ attempt to explain his perspective. In the process, he created a bigger mess.

“Defeating White supremacy without White people creates Black supremacy,” Crews tweeted on Sunday. “Equality is the truth. Like it or not, we are all in this together.”

As one can imagine, this didn’t go over well (his wording suggested a warning against something, “Black supremacy,” which does not exist), and Crews’ name trended for several hours in a way that no one should be thrilled to be mentioned. At the forefront of responses was Tyler James Williams, his former TV son on Everybody Hates Chris.

“[W]e’re rightfully angry right now and fed up with anyone not with our cause wholeheartedly,” Williams explained after an expression of love. “I don’t want to see that energy pointed your way or diverted from the cause.”

Crews responded that “I was not saying Black supremacy exists, because it doesn’t.” And he continued: “I am saying if both Black and Whites don’t continue to work together– bad attitudes and resentments can create a dangerous self-righteousness.”

The responses to that reply grew heated with some pointing out that Crews’ initial choice of words had left a lot to be desired. Others accused him of “gaslighting,” but again, it was mostly noted that Crews had clumsily called for people to work together, and “that was already happening.” His language, argued another user, “play[ed] into the white supremacist narrative of being ‘concerned’ about the protests.”

At that point, Crews probably should have stopped tweeting, but that didn’t happen. He further tweeted about “gatekeepers of Blackness” and doubled down: “Any Black person who calls me a coon or and Uncle Tom for promoting EQUALITY is a Black Supremist, because they have determined who’s Black and who is not.”

Earlier this year, Pete Davidson sounded like he was done with SNL.

The King of Staten Island star told Charlamagne Tha God, “I’m like, cold open, political punchlines. I’m like, Weekend Update jokes. When I’m not there, they’ll be like, ‘Huh huh huh, Pete’s a f*cking jerk face.’ And you’re like, ‘Whose side are you on?’ I have a weird feeling in that building where I don’t know whose team they’re playing for really, if I’m the joke or I’m in on the joke.” He also said that he’s “literally painted out to be this big dumb idiot.” But in the months since, Davidson has changed his tune. You gain a lot of perspective when you’re stuck in your mom’s basement during a pandemic, turns out.

“I will be [on SNL] as long as they allow me to be,” Davidson told ET Online. “I think I’m very lucky to be on that show and I’m really lucky to have Lorne Michaels as, you know, not only a mentor and a boss, but a friend. I’ll be there as long as they allow it.”

Davidson also opened up about his “dark and scary” battle with mental health issues. “I got as close as you can get — just like testing the waters,” he said on CBS Sunday Morning about contemplating suicide. “Until I met the right treatments and met the right doctors and did all the work that you need to do to not feel that way, it got pretty dark and scary.” You can watch the CBS Sunday Morning interview below, and Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island, which also stars Bill Burr and Steve Buscemi, on June 12.

(Via ET)

Most of what fans hear from J. Cole is through his music, as he isn’t the most active on social media. Even when he does post online, it’s mostly about whatever new project he has on the way or has just come out.

Over the weekend, though, he took to his sparingly used Twitter account to offer his thoughts on the recent vote to disband the Minneapolis Police Department following the death of George Floyd and the civil unrest that has ensued. For his third tweet of 2020, Cole shared an article about the department disbanding and wrote, “Powerful powerful.”

Over the weekend, nine of the 13 Minneapolis city council members declared their intention to defund and dismantle the city’s police department. Council President Lisa Bender told CNN, “We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe. [We need] to listen, especially to our Black leaders, to our communities of color, for whom policing is not working and to really let the solutions lie in our community.”

While Cole hasn’t been active on social media since Floyd’s death, that doesn’t mean he’s not supporting the cause, as he attended a protest in North Carolina in May.

The ‘Billions’ Stock Watch is a weekly accounting of the action on the Showtime drama. Decisions will be made based on speculation and occasional misinformation and mysterious whims that are never fully explained to the general public. Kind of like the real stock market.

STOCK DOWN — Chuck, repeatedly

Not a great week for Chuck Rhoades, a man whose new move appears to be “showing up unannounced to dump a problem on very successful women, to various degrees of success.” He stopped by Wendy’s office to ask her about donating a kidney to his dying, liquor-drinking, cigar-smoking, pigheaded father. He showed up at Cat’s door to ask her to kind of compromise her life’s work so he could hammer the Manhattan DA with a threat about punishing sex workers. And he crashed the Manhattan DA’s fancy dumpling lunch to deploy that threat in his efforts to steal back the tax fraud case he started building against Axe. No high-achieving woman in New York is safe from the old Chuck drop-in. I’m surprised he didn’t wake up Sacker at 2 a.m. to ask her if she knew his Netflix password.

The worst part: All of it ended up being for naught, as Axe out-maneuvered him with a midnight art ruse that involved a helicopter and a dozen or so empty crates. That one hurt him. He had been riding so high earlier, especially when he swung by Axe’s apartment to make a circular threat and spill wine on a priceless Van Gogh to smoke out Axe’s true reaction, dropping references to the classic and true “Steve Wynn flails his elbow through a Picasso” story. (Please read Nora Ephron’s telling of this. It’s a great story.) But there he was, later on, befuddled and bamboozled, his case in tatters, his father still kidney-less, and altogether just defeated, except for the part where Cat got them a sex worker for the night as some sort of reward/lesson involving his decision to not follow through with his really ugly threat about burying other sex workers out of spite.

Baby steps, I guess.

STOCK UP — Axe, professionally if not personally

Axe should be happy, in theory. He got everything he wanted. He and his team figured out how to dodge the tax fraud case by turning his masterpiece-filled apartment into a private art gallery owned by his charitable foundation. He’s well on the way to getting his bank, after sidestepping various regulators — one of whom was bought off by Chuck, the other of whom justifiably hates him and thinks Spyros is a putz, also justifiably — and calling in a favor from Krakow, the Secretary of the Entire Dang Treasury. Wins all around, in situations where he definitely deserved to take losses.

And yet… not so much. He’s a paranoid wreck all the time, convinced the world is out to get him (which it is, as of a result of his many shady actions over the years), and the thing with Wendy and his artist, Nico, is driving him insane. I don’t know how else you can describe it. He saw the portrait sketch of a mostly nude Wendy and punished Nico by forcing him to paint a portrait of Krakow, and then stayed up all night drinking wine and watching bootleg security footage of the building to see how long Wendy was there. Then he called her as soon as she left in the morning and set up an ominous dinner between him, the two of them, and whoever he chooses to bring, which will almost certainly be a catastrophe designed to punish everyone. Axe is a child. He’s broken and ruined and dangerous and he destroys everything he touches.

But at least he got to keep his paintings, I guess.

STOCK DOWN — Art, which, for this discussion, also includes pizza

Tough week for otherwise principled artists, as Axe continued his long and storied tradition of corrupting everything he claims to love. There was the aforementioned thing with Nico about doing the portrait by commission of noted weasel Todd Krakow (and, really, does anyone anywhere play a better weasel than Danny Strong?). And then, literally, on the way out the door from that discussion, he poked his head into the pizza kitchen to propose bastardizing a pizza maestro’s work — the same pizza maestro who doesn’t like delivering his pizza because it loses quality en route — by adding frozen pies and gelato and an entire empire of high-end Italian freezer stuffers, much to the delight of the chef’s cousin and business manager, Manz, played by Dominic Lombardozzi, in his ongoing quest to appear in every premium cable drama on television. I’m rooting for him. Love that guy.

Art has never won a battle with commerce on Billions. It never will. If and win Axe ruins this pizza operation, I will be inconsolable. Pizza is the one pure thing we have left in the world. We must protect it.

STOCK UP — Taylor Mason

Yes, Taylor outflanked Oscar to land the big fancy methane client for the new impact fund with Wendy. Yes, acquiring the patent and tracking down the rogue employee were brilliant Axe-like moves that negated Oscar’s attempted massive overpay Raiders-inspired punishment. Great, terrific, wonderful. None of that is why Taylor falls under Stock Up this week. The real reasons are as follows:

• Taylor did a surprisingly decent Mike Birbiglia impression while making the pitch in front of both Birbiglia’s character and the methane guy
• Taylor got to call in Hard Bob, noted zero bullshit broker, who is way up there with Chuck’s goon Karl on the list of menacing older dudes from this show I wish I could call to handle my own problems

So Taylor has that going for them, which is nice.

STOCK UP — Mafee and Ben Kim, my sweet boys of finance

We learned a couple things about Spyros this week: He’d been faking his status as a member of Mensa and his nickname at the SEC was “Roomba,” not because he cleaned up problems but because he sucked and was creepy. These double confidence blows led to a tailspin, which led to him studying for the Mensa test for real, which led to the discovery that Mafee is like a world-class genius, which led to my sweet finance boys Mafee and Ben Kim putting a whole fake test in motion so Spyros could pass and get off their backs.

I love Mafee and Ben Kim. I would watch an entire episode where they just go on vacation together and mosey around some high-end all-inclusive resort, hopelessly chatting up fellow tourists and drinking umbrella drinks and being their awkward, kindhearted selves for an hour, but in swimsuits. Mafee has suntan lotion all over his nose. Ben Kim gets giggly when he’s drunk. I can see it all now. And I want it. I could use a break from Axe and Chuck trying to destroy themselves and each other.

STOCK DOWN — Pig kidneys

Senior has problems. His kidneys are failing and no one — not even his bastards, which he denied in a furious rage and then admitted to moments later — is a match. He’s sitting at home alone and lashing out with extra cruelty at Chuck, the only person who is trying to help him, and a person he has screwed up beyond even Wendy’s help. I shouldn’t feel bad about any of this. The man is a crusty old bigoted monster whose view of the world was out-of-date 30 years before he was born. I am a little sad, though. I think it’s his way with words. I mean, his delivery of the line in that screencap up there immediately after Wendy suggested looking into the promising practice of using pig kidney… just delightful.

We must keep him alive or let him stick around as a ghost that haunts Chuck. Like, a real ghost. A Jacob Marley and Scrooge situation. But Senior is somehow both Jacob Marley and Scrooge. This makes perfect sense to me.

STOCK UP — Having a braintrust

I do not envy Axe in many ways. As I said earlier, he’s a broken little boy who wants every toy and refuses to share. He is incapable of real happiness because there’s a bottomless pit inside him that he needs to keep heaving things into in a perpetual and impotent attempt to fill it. I hope he goes to prison as soon as possible.

But, look. I would very much like to have a group of people on call who can orchestrate something like a midnight art helicopter swaperoo. I don’t see a scenario in my life where I will ever require a midnight art helicopter swaperoo. I don’t even see a scenario where I will require any kind of helicopter swaperoo at any time of day, to be honest.

It would be comforting to know I have the option, though. That’s all I’m saying.

BTS have perhaps the most dedicated fan base in all of music, and they often use that passion to bring light into the world. For example: Back in March, after the coronavirus forced the group to cancel their tour, fans who received refunds for concert tickets used that money to raise over $300,000 for coronavirus relief. Now, in light of the civil unrest in the US at the moment, the BTS Army, as the group’s fans are known, have banded together to do some more good.

Over the weekend, it was revealed that BTS and their label, Big Hit Entertainment, had donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter following the death of George Floyd. The band’s fans then decided to match that donation, and actually, they exceeded it.

Charitable fan collective One In An ARMY shared a directory of organizations to which fans could donate, and fans could give to specific organizations or split donations across Black Lives Matter, Reclaim The Block, National Bail Out, Black Visions Collective, NAACP Legal Defense And Educational Fund, and others. One In An ARMY notes it only took about 26 hours from the time the initiative was first publicized to reach $1 million in total donations.

A spokesperson said in response to the goal being met:

“We truly didn’t know whether the goal would be reached. We’re so proud that ARMY have once again channeled their power for good and are making a real impact in the fight against anti-black racism. […] We’re happy to help ARMY organize and support the Black Lives Matter movement. We stand in solidarity with black ARMY. They’re an important part of our family. And we stand with black people everywhere. Your voices deserve to be heard.”

BTS have yet to offer a public comment about their own donation, but last week, they wrote in a pro-Black Lives Matter tweet, “We stand against racial discrimination. We condemn violence. You, I and we all have the right to be respected. We will stand together.”

With the exception of calling the president “utterly f*cking disgusting” for invoking George Floyd’s name during a rambling speech about the economy, Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight was about one topic and one topic only: the police. “It’s genuinely impossible to overstate how enraging that is,” host John Oliver, showing more fury than usual, said after showing footage of cops harming peaceful protestors. “They’re protesting excessive force by police, and police just start pepper-spraying them like it’s f*cking sunscreen. And that’s just one of hundreds and hundreds of videos.”

Oliver covered “how the f*ck we got to this point, what the obstacles to reform have been, and what we can do going forward,” including pop culture’s fetishization of the police (he referred to Lethal Weapon as Manic Bigot and His One Black Friend), how law enforcement has always been “entangled with white supremacy,” and police unions. “I get unions fighting for their workers; that is what they do,” he said. “But police unions take that to a dangerous extreme and negotiate language into contracts that makes removing a problem officer incredibly difficult.” He also discussed defunding the police:

“Defunding the police absolutely does not mean that we eliminate all cops and just succumb to the purge. Instead, it’s about moving away from a narrow conception of public safety that relies on policing and punishment and investing in a community’s actual safety net.”

Oliver ended the segment with a message to viewers. “Ours is a firmly entrenched system in which the roots of white supremacy run deep, and it is critical that we all grab a fucking shovel. To do anything less would be absolutely unforgivable,” he said before showing a video of author Kimberly Jones talking about the protests. Watch it above.

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Some of ’em figuratively, some of ’em literally.

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Oh, to be a rat wearing a chef’s hat!

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