Category: Trending

Chloe Bailey is having a big year. The singer unveiled her new album In Pieces, performed an NPR Tiny Desk, and embarked on a massive tour that featured some exciting appearances from her sister Halle.

She recently went on The Dotty Show to talk about all she’s been doing, as well as her love life. “I’ll say it. Michael B. Jordan is my celebrity crush,” she revealed. However, it wasn’t much of a surprise: “I’ve been saying that in interviews even, like, years ago,” she continued. She has no plans on doing anything about it, though; “I don’t shoot my shot,” she explained.

She received some criticism from the public for having Chris Brown feature on the In Pieces song “How Does It Feel” due to his 2009 assault on Rihanna and subsequent allegations of harassment, battery, sexual assault, and more. Chloe defended the collaboration, saying, “I always just wanna let the music speak for itself, and to be honest, no matter what I do, people always find things to say about it, so I’m used to it. I just choose to ignore it. People have every right to their opinions, freedom of speech, and it’s up to me to choose what I give my attention and energy to.”

Millions of people are fixated on Taylor Swift seemingly dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, especially after Swift attended the Chiefs’ 41-10 blowout of the Chicago Bears at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri on Sunday, September 24. During the game, everything Swift did went viral – from how she screamed “let’s f*cking go” after Kelce’s touchdown catch to what she had on her plate in Kelce’s suite.

The popular Swift fan account @tswifterastour on X (formerly known as Twitter) posted a seemingly innocuous photo of Swift posing with someone in the suite. Swift was seated at a table on which a plate with one chicken strip, one puddle of ketchup, and one puddle of a white sauce was set. “Taylor Swift was eating a piece of chicken with ketchup and seemingly ranch!” the person behind @tswifterastour captioned the post that has since been viewed 32.3 million times.

Before we go any further, has anybody considered that the plate wasn’t even Swift’s? Isn’t it entirely possible that Swift just wanted to calm down from all her feral cheering and sat down without noticing that someone else’s plate was there? And, as a Kansas Citian, I feel responsibility to point out that it’s also likely that the presumed ketchup in this situation could have very well been barbecue sauce.

Regardless, brands saw an opportunity. On Tuesday, September 26, Heinz revealed a limited-edition “Ketchup And Seemingly Ranch” flavor that will soon be available for purchase.Primal Kitchen is selling a “Seemingly Ranch” dressing for $8.99 on its website. The bleeping Empire State Building lit up in red and white on Wednesday night, September 27, and the building’s X account posted, “Ketchup and seemingly ranch.”

“my life has severely spiraled into an unending void of seemingly ranch the past few days,” the person behind @tswifterastour wrote on Wednesday night. “not sure how to handle the products released about it but if they want to reach out my dms are always open.”

There will seemingly be more opportunities for brands to leverage Kelce and Swift’s personal lives for their greedy gain this weekend. According to Front Office Sports and Jordan Schultz, Swift “plans to attend” the Chiefs’ next game against the New York Jets on Sunday, October 1, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The game will be on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, beginning at 8:20 p.m. EST.

As Cardi B says in her new interview with Hot Ones, anyone who knows her knows she’s a big history buff. And as she reveals in the interview, her favorite era of US History is World War II (she’s just like your dad!). She explains why as she struggles through the pain of munching on the “world’s hottest wings” (using her ultra long nails as “tweezers” to pick them up!).

“I’m obsessed with World War II,” she says, recalling her visit to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s house. “I’m obsessed with just learning everything about it so for me to just be in the same room that Churchill and FDR was discussing the nuke, it was just such a moment for me.” She enjoyed talking about the moment so much, that she actually recovered from the 8th wing, the infamous Da Bomb (of course, there’s also a slick edit from the Hot Ones team, so it definitely took a while).

Cardi’s album rollout is off to a great start; between releasing “Bongos” with Megan Thee Stallion, performing it at the VMAs, and delivering an all-timer interview with Hot Ones, Cardi’s name should be lingering on listeners’ tongues the way Da Bomb did on hers. You can watch the full Hot Ones interview above.

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

In 2021, Adele and Kanye West found themselves Peppa Pig’s bad side. That came after Cardi B cursed Peppa Pig for influencing her daughter, Kulture, to stomp in puddles. On Wednesday, September 27, Katy Perry swooped in and mended fences between the children’s cartoon and musical stars.

Deadline exclusively reported that Perry has signed on to guest star on Peppa Pig as the voice of a brand-new character, Ms. Leopard.

“It comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of the preschool animated series, which was created by Neville Astley and Mark Baker,” the report relayed. “Perry’s performance will feature in an episode for the three-part Peppa Pig Wedding Party Special, which is set to premiere in Spring 2024. The series, which initially launched in May 2004, airs on Nickeldeon and Paramount+ in the US.”

The official Peppa Pig Instagram account confirmed the news, sharing a photo of Ms. Leopard.

Perry shares three-year-old Daisy with Orlando Bloom, so she will likely have an in-house critic of her performance as Ms. Leopard.

“I haven’t put any new material out since my darling Daisy,” Perry told Good Morning America in August, discussing the “light and bright” music she’d been writing. “I think that I’m writing a lot and have written a lot from a place of love because I’m feeling so much of it — so much unconditional love, that love you never knew existed.”

Perry’s last studio album was Smile in August 2020, but she’s maintained a mainstream profile as a judge on American Idol.

With Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom set to officially end the DC Extended Universe (or Snyderverse, if you nasty), fans are growing increasingly curious about how James Gunn will right the ship with his bold, new DC Universe that will officially kick off with the release of Superman: Legacy.

Fortunately, Gunn is big on interacting with fans on social media, and the DC Studios chief dropped some big news during a recent Q&A session on Threads. While Gunn has always touted that his DC Universe reboot will be fluid and could incorporate elements from the DCEU, he has been light on specifics. That changed on Wednesday when he confirmed the names of at least three actors who will reprise their roles, and yes, one of them is Peacemaker. (Hurray!)

“Xolo Maridueña will continue playing Blue Beetle in the DCU, as Viola Davis will Amanda Waller, and John Cena will Peacemaker,” Gunn wrote.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gunn still plans on making Season 2 of the fan-favorite Cena show once he completes Superman: Legacy. Although, it’s unclear whether the recent strikes have impacted that timeline. In the meantime, Gunn made it clear how his new DC Universe will work, and that nothing that happened before it is “canon” even though some characters will be returning.

“Nothing is canon until Creature Commandos next year — a sort of aperitif to the DCU — & then a deeper dive into the universe with Superman: Legacy after that,” Gunn wrote. “It’s a very human drive to want to understand everything all the time, but I think its okay to be confused on what’s happening in the DCU since no one has seen anything from the DCU yet.”

Superman: Legacy flies into theaters on July 11, 2025.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Kanye West and Drake may be (mostly) all buddy-buddy now, but it wasn’t so long ago that they were feuding so fiercely that West asked some of his closest collaborators — including Travis Scott — not to work with Drake at all.

According to fellow Chicagoan and frequent Ye collaborator Malik Yusef, West apparently took to (unsuccessfully) banning his various peers and proteges from collaborating with the Canadian star. Yusef appeared on the Rap Today With Francis podcast, where he tried to explain some of West’s more controversial behavior over the past few years, including recent antisemitic remarks in the media.

“I think [the antisemitic comments] were for Drake [who is Jewish],” he elaborated. “That’s what I think. I don’t know who else you would say that was. I have never directly worked with Drake ’cause Kanye asked me not to. He said, ‘Please don’t go work directly with Drake.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ ‘Cause Kanye’s brother, but I love Drake too, though. He asked Travis [Scott] the same thing, but Travis said no.”

As far as why Kanye had it out for Drake for so long, Yusef is as stumped as the rest of us. “I think that Drake loves Kanye, and that Kanye hates that Drake loves him,” he reckoned. “I don’t feel like him being angry with Drake has any credence, because Drake has been nothing but kind and good and a good student of Kanye, so I don’t know where the anger comes from. ’He took my style!’ Okay, cool. Drake takes everybody’s style. To me, Drake has his own unique style — it’s a hodgepodge of several different styles.”

Malik Yusef was an early and frequent collaborator of Kanye’s, appearing on Kanye’s debut album The College Dropout and on the GOOD Music compilation Cruel Summer. West also produced much of Yusef’s second album GOOD Morning, GOOD Night. Kanye’s ongoing dispute with Drake appeared to have been settled with their Free Larry Hoover concert in LA a few years ago, but if Yusef’s right, it appears that West may still harbor some resentment for his longtime frenemy.

Every month, Uproxx cultural critic Steven Hyden makes an unranked list of his favorite music-related items released during this period — songs, albums, books, films, you name it.

1. Mitski, The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We

Recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles, with a cast of supporting musicians that include country scene stalwarts like pedal-steel guitarist Fats Kaplin and keyboardist Brooke Waggoner, The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We is as still and insular as Mitski’s previous record, 2022’s Laurel Hell, was upwardly mobile and extroverted. The music is stately, dreamy, and extremely pretty, with Mitski’s voice buffeted by a pocket symphony of soft-focus Americana instrumentation, a stirringly cinematic string section, and a ghostly 17-person choir. But the key difference — and, in my mind, improvement — relates to how Mitski is back to playing to her strengths as a maker of songs that build a world in the listener’s mind. The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We is not the kind of record you make in anticipation of playing stadiums with Harry Styles, as Laurel Hell was. Rather, it is situated in a strange, shadowy environment that exists strictly in the singer’s imagination, and only during the album’s 32-minute duration.

2. The National, Frankenstein Laughs

This album technically doesn’t exist. But it’s one of my favorite records of the year. Let me explain: Earlier this month, The National dropped a surprise new album. It’s called Laugh Track, and it arrived just five months after their previous LP released in 2023, First Two Pages Of Frankenstein. Since both records essentially draw from the same sessions, it makes sense that they have received similarly mixed reviews. To my ears, Laugh Track is somewhat more consistent, and the inclusion of “Smoke Detector” — easily the rawest and most rocking song on either record — automatically makes it feel relatively looser and jammier. But in the end Laugh Track has the same weaknesses as Frankenstein — too many celebrity guest stars, too many same-y sounding ballads, too much bloat. So I decided to some emergency A&R and make my own 12-track National album out of the pile material they put out in 2023. It’s called Frankenstein Laughs, and I think it’s a great!

3. The Replacements, Tim (Let It Bleed Edition)

Tim is my favorite Replacements album. Which means that I came to love it — to paraphrase another songwriter who once wrote about losers hanging out in a bar — just the way it is. I even constructed a critical argument that justified the album’s famously washed-out sound: The tinny guitars and clanking, ’80s-sounding drums evoke the headspace of a hungover 25-year-old having a nervous breakdown at the height of the Reagan era. The music feels distant because our unreliable narrator is alienated from his own sense of self. All of that said: The new remix is obviously fantastic. The refurbished “Little Mascara” will bring tears to your eyes! And the box set packaging outtakes and live cuts is essential for anyone who has spent their lives aspiring to Paul Westerberg’s nonchalant genius.

4. Stop Making Sense in IMAX

What a picture! Stop Making Sense is obviously one of the best concert films ever, but seeing it again in glorious IMAX reminded me that it’s also one of the best hangout movies. I can’t think of another concert film where you feel like you get to spend quality time with each person on stage. Jonathan Demme treats whoever is on screen like a star. A small moment: When Bernie Worrell comes out for “Burning Down The House” Demme stays with him for a few extra beats after the band comes in. I feel like most directors would’ve cut immediately to a wide shot of the band but I think Demme just liked hanging with Bernie! But Demme gives every musician a hero’s welcome. When Chris Frantz comes out for “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel,” he does this incredible spin on Frantz from behind all while David Byrne is singing the first verse. It’s like a big bear hug! Of course, the whole movie feels like that.

5. Slow Pulp, Yard

This Chicago-by-way-of-Madison indie band made some waves with their 2020 debut Moveys, though their progress was blunted somewhat by the pandemic. Therefore, the just-released Yard (due Friday) seems doubly consequential, especially since it shows off their impressive range, which veers from darkly beautiful alt-country to introspective folk to zippy guitar pop numbers. It’s the kind of big-tent indie rock record that used to be a lot more common 20 years ago, and still has the potential to win over scores of fans. Expect to hear a lot more about this band in the months ahead.

6. Wilco, Cousin

With their last record Cruel Country, Wilco reverted to a more overtly rootsy sound and inserted some pleasingly jammy Grateful Dead accents. It was the most summery music they had made in years, though anyone expecting them to stay in that lane will be surprised by the new Cousin. Working with an outside producer for the first time in years, the avant-pop singer-songwriter Cate Le Bon, Wilco has delved back into the uncertain sonic soundscapes of their recent work, in which woozy and unpredictable instrumentation set a disorienting backdrop for Jeff Tweedy’s ruminations on the state of the human heart. “I love to take my meds,” he sings in one of the best tracks, “Levee.” “But I worry that I shouldn’t instead.” This album exists at that same spiritual and psychological nexus point.

7. Slaughter Beach, Dog, Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling

Speaking of Wilco: If you wish Tweedy was still making records that sound like Summerteeth, I have the album for you. A project fronted by ex-Modern Baseball guitarist Jake Ewald, Slaughter Beach, Dog make candy-coated heartland rock songs that occasionally drift into spaced-out Cosmic Country jams. On Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling, Ewald steps up with his most solid set of songs, and the chummy backing of his band makes the album feel like a comfy hang with old pals.

8. Jerry David DeCicca, New Shadows

Like DeCicca, I have a lot of affection for the work of boomer-era rockers in the 1980s, a time when the great singer-songwriters of the 1960s entered a new world synths and drum machines and attempted to infuse the new technology with a little poetry. DeCicca’s new album nods to once-maligned masterworks like Neil Young’s Trans, Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man, Bob Dylan’s Empire Burlesque, and Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel Of Love, and successfully achieves the same debauched lushness that those records have. While others have already dipped into this aesthetic — notable predecessors include Destroyer’s Kaputt and John Mayer’s Sob Rock — DeCicca has an ear for the perversity of those old albums, and gives New Shadows a similarly offbeat vibe.

Now that Suits is the biggest show of the summer, star Patrick J. Adams shared behind-the-scenes photos from the every-episode-is-the-same-but-in-a-fun-way USA Network series. Many of the snaps featured Meghan Markle, who you might have heard is married to some royal guy, but those pictures have since been removed. It’s not because Markle and Prince Harry’s private security team threatened Adams to delete them… or else. It’s because Adams shared the photos amid the SAG-AFTRA strike.

“The last couple of days I foolishly and thoughtlessly let a trip down Suits memory lane distract me from the very real and ongoing fight everyone in @sagafstra continues to wage in its effort to win out membership realistic 21st Century compensation and protections,” Adams wrote in an Instagram Story, according to Page Six. “It was an embarrassing oversight for which I’m incredibly sorry. So grateful to those who gently and swiftly course corrected me here and I look forward to continuing the fight in the days and weeks ahead.”

He ended the post with #sagaftrastrong.

In one photo, Markle was seen lying upside down wearing a white blouse and brown pencil skirt with her barefoot up in the air as she posed beside co-star Sarah Rafferty, who played Donna Paulsen. Another now-removed image showed Markle’s black-and-white portrait.

This isn’t a Drew Barrymore situation. Adams seems genuinely sorry for what he did. He also has a good sense of humor about being on the same show as Markle. His Instagram bio reads, “the guy from that show you’re watching on that app because that girl married that prince.”

(Via Page Six)

Damian Lillard is now a member of a contender in the Eastern Conference, and perhaps surprisingly, that team isn’t the Miami Heat. Despite Lillard initially wanting the Portland Trail Blazers to send him to South Beach, he’s now a member of the Milwaukee Bucks as part of a three-team deal that also included the Phoenix Suns.

We learned in the aftermath of the deal that Lillard’s camp became open to the idea of playing in Milwaukee recently, and both he and Giannis Antetokounmpo have expressed their admiration for one another in the past. But usually in these situations, stars get what they wanted from the jump, and Lillard did not get the move to Miami that he coveted.

In a new piece by Sam Amick and Shams Charania of The Athletic, we learned a bit about how serious the Blazers were in their early talks with the Heat. Basically, Portland used the tried and true method of asking for guys they would never, under any circumstances, get.

The Blazers and Heat had multiple conversations in July, but the sides never engaged in substantive negotiations, according to those sources. In an initial call, the Blazers asked the Heat for Jimmy Butler or Bam Adebayo. The Heat came to believe that the Blazers had little to no interest in engaging in a deal with them, and as much as Lillard and Goodwin wished that the Blazers would attempt to satisfy the seven-time All-Star’s wish, Portland refused.

There is obviously no universe in which the Heat would consider trading either of those guys for Lillard, which is clear to anyone. We’ll have to see if Miami tries to do anything else now that Lillard is no longer on the table for them, and no matter what they choose, it’s a pretty safe assumption that things will be built around Adebayo and Butler going forward.

In 2021, it was reported that filmmaker Matthew Vaughn was working on a spy film called Argylle, with a star-studded cast that included pop star Dua Lipa. The “Levitating” singer just made her acting debut in Barbie, and now the trailer for Argylle is out.

The trailer opens with Lipa in a sparkling gold dress, her hair platinum blonde. At one point, she’s shooting a rifle and winking; at another point, John Cena physically removes her from a moving motorcycle. It’s sure to be an action-packed experience.

Last month, Lipa gave an update on her highly anticipated next album to The New York Times‘ T Magazine, who wrote, “The next record will still be pop, she says, lest her ‘fans have a meltdown.’ She doesn’t want to ‘alienate’ them, although she’s developing a new sound that may be informed less by the house and disco beats beneath songs like ‘Physical’ and ‘Hallucinate’ than by 1970s-era psychedelia. She’s working with a smaller group of songwriting collaborators, supposedly including Kevin Parker of the Australian psych-rock band Tame Impala.”

Argylle comes to theaters on February 2, 2024. In the meantime, watch the trailer above.

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