Category: Trending

Zach Bryan’s self-titled album is here. On the 16-track project, the country star invited a host of special guests to contribute to one of his most personal works to date, including War And Treaty, Sierra Ferrell, The Lumineers, and Kacey Musgraves. Of the offerings, Bryan and Musgraves’s song “I Remember Everything” is a painstaking tale of two lovers at the end of their romantic road.

From Bryan’s narration, the fictional love between him and Musgraves is perfectly flawed. “Rotgut whiskey’s gonna ease my mind / Beach towel rests on the dryin’ line / Do I remind you of your daddy in his ’88 Ford? / Labrador hangin’ out the passenger door / The sand from your hair is blowin’ in my eyes / Blame it on the beach, grown men don’t cry / Do you remember that beat down basement couch? / I’d sing you my love songs, and you’d tell me about / How your mama ran off and pawned her ring / I remember, I remember everything.”

However, Musgraves begs to differ, singing, “You’re drinkin’ everything to ease your mind / But when the hell are you gonna ease mine? / You’re like concrete feet in the summer heat / It burns like hell when two souls meet / No, you’ll never be the man that you always swore / But I’ll remember you singin’ in that ’88 Ford.”

The record, solely produced by Bryan, shows why country music has stood the test of time. Listen to the track above.

Zach Bryan is out now via Warner Records. Find more information here.

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

Two weeks after the release of his new album, Porches, Reason appeared on The Breakfast Club to clarify one of the high-profile snafus that happened during the album’s rollout. A few days before the album’s release, Reason appeared on a livestream of the BACKONFIGG podcast, where he seemingly vented his frustrations about his label, TDE, prompting the label’s president, Moosa Tiffith, to call on and get into a heated back-and-forth with his artist.

In the course of the discussion, Moosa revealed that Reason was initially not a priority for his predecessor Dave Free, and joked that even the hosts on the podcast didn’t know any Reason songs. And while fans took the discourse as evidence of a rift between the artist and business partner, during his Breakfast Club interview, Reason asserted that while “it definitely shouldn’t” have happened in public, the discussion was just one of many and there’s no bad blood between them.

Asked if there was a problem between him and TDE, Reason said, “That entire situation, that was a conversation that me and Moo have had behind closed doors a lot…. it definitely shouldn’t have been out in the public. It’s a lot of misconceptions about that… Moosa loves this album. He helped me pick some of the records… It was just one of those things that got so nasty and ugly publicly that now, everything is ‘A Thing.’”

He elaborated that other comments he’d made accidentally fed into the narrative. For example, he’d said no one from the label came to his release party, but explained that the statement was taken out of context; he had previously had a label-led listening, but the release party was more private for family and friends. He also stood behind his statement about J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar, clarifying that he didn’t think J. Cole would be bigger than his former labelmate, just bigger in general.

He also said he had more than 1,300 songs recorded… and reiterated that he wanted to put more out. You can see the full interview above.

Is Portland’s iconic Voodoo Doughnuts the most overrated tourist attraction in the world? According to a study by USA Today — and by “study” we mean they scanned 23.2 million Google Reviews of popular tourist attractions looking for the words ‘tourist trap,’ ‘overrated’ and ‘expensive,’ so it’s… not exactly scientific — it is, alongside the Four Corners (the biggest US tourist trap), and the California Academy of Sciences (the most overpriced attraction). We’re not quite convinced, not because we have love for Voodoo Doughnuts (mom-and-pop doughnut shops for the win!), but because we’re not entirely sure you can call a f*cking doughnut shop a tourist attraction at all. [Also, because Four Corners is amazing — go to Canyon De Chelley and tell me otherwise. -ed]

Who are you that you’re traveling far and wide for doughnuts? If you’re coming to Portland and visiting Voodoo Doughnuts is at the top of your list of things to do, you’re probably missing out on a lot of things. That’s our take, but the internet at large had a different take.

While many people agreed, several X users — aka the app formally known as Twitter — were happy to name tourist attractions that are an even bigger waste of time with some even declaring that Portland itself was overrated.

We think that one is a stretch. But here are some of the takes X users offered.

Where do you stand? Is Voodoo Doughnuts overrated, underrated, accurately rated? Is Uproxx Life editor (and Portland boy) Steve Bramucci wrong? (Absolutely).

You may have noticed, over the past several months, that more of your favorite standup comics are dipping their toes into music. Jaboukie Young-White certainly has, and he’s got a great explanation for it: “I also think that the very stringent, ‘Oh, you do this one thing, you can’t do this other thing’ — that just doesn’t feel like a Black thing to me,” he tells me during an enlightening (and yes, hilarious) Zoom call. We are discussing — what else? — Jaboukie’s new album, All Who Can’t Hear Must Feel, which is out today via Interscope.

The eclectic project takes inspiration from the experimental, avant-garde rap of acts like 454, Azealia Banks, and Jpegmafia, as well as electronic dance music influences. Jaboukie started putting it together during the live entertainment shutdown of 2020, and its title comes from a proverb often uttered by Jamaican parents as a warning. If you can’t learn from instruction, you’ll learn from bitter experience; as a stand-up, artist, and activist, Jaboukie’s experience is extensive.

The comedian, who often challenges and interrogates ideas of identity, masculinity, and sexuality in his standup, leans into the subjects here, but don’t get it twisted; this is not “conscious rap” or rap with an overt message. Over the course of the album’s 13 tracks, Jaboukie explores these themes in depth, but he also gets loose, indulging his inner hip-hop head and encouraging listeners to shake off their blues, as early house raves once did.

Over the course of our conversation, we touch on these subjects and more as we collaborate to unearth the truths behind its creation, the hope for its impact, and the correlation between being funny and having bars. While subjects like his role in the HBO hip-hop dramedy Rap Sh!t were off-limits due to the ongoing WGA and SAG strikes against the AMPTP, church plays, politicians, and even a passing familial resemblance were all on the table.

I gotta say: Normally I do not really like avant-garde, stream-of-consciousness hip-hop albums. But this one, it grabbed me by the neck. There was a bar on there that cracked me up, and I highlighted it. When you were like, “They say Bouks, he be snapping in the booth / I say, ‘True. What’s another enclosed room?’” And I’m mad at you. That was a good-ass line.

Thank you, man. I’m glad that you pointed out that one. There’s some in there where the real hip-hop head came out in me, where I’m like, people who are casually listening are not going to be getting this, but the people who will read lyrics, this is for those kinds of people. So, I’m happy that you liked it. I appreciate that.

You’d been working on some demos in your spare time. How exactly did those get into the hands of (Interscope CEO) John Janick?

I was working on a Juice WRLD film. It wasn’t his biography, but it was going to be based on his music. So I’m working on that, and it would’ve been potentially the first animated feature that I would direct, and I didn’t have a studded-out resume. And it wouldn’t just be me. It would’ve been me and other co-directors. But then they’re like, “Okay, well, do you have music experience? That would be a selling point for you as a potential director.” And I was like, “Yeah, I got a little something.”

Then I sent along a SoundCloud link with a few songs on there. I think it was “26,” “Incel,” an early version of “Hit Clips,” and maybe an earlier cut of “BBC.” And I sent those out, didn’t hear anything. A week goes by, still don’t hear anything. Maybe two weeks go by and I’m like, okay, I’m just going to close that and I’m just going to pretend like that never happened. I was like ‘Alright, that’s in the past. We’re moving on. New thing, new me. Forget about it.’

And then maybe a few more weeks go by, or at least what felt like a few more weeks. It could have been days. I don’t know. That was my first time sharing music with literally anyone other than my brothers and maybe a few close friends. So I’d never done that before. And then I get a frantic call sometime later and someone’s like, “Open the link, open the SoundCloud link, open the SoundCloud link.”

And then I hear from the guy that they passed it to, John Janick. He liked it and then wanted to meet with me. So I met with him and then they were like, “Yeah, do you want to do this for real?” And I was like, “Yes.” And I really forced my way into it. That’s what I’ve been saying. But it really did feel like I kind of just happily stumbled into a great opportunity.

It feels like that’s how all the best stories go, right? It’s just “something happens and then something else happens and then the next thing you know, there you are.”

Right. I just was lucky enough to, when that question was asked, be able to say, “Yeah, I got something,” and was able to share it. I feel like that’s how every single lick that I’ve hit has always been luck. It wasn’t a lick. It was luck. It wasn’t a finesse. It was like fortune came and then I just so happened to be ready when it happened.

That’s the title of the memoir. It Wasn’t a Lick, It Was Luck.

It wasn’t a lick. It was luck. Yes.

When and how did you get started? Because obviously, we all downloaded a DAW at some point in our lives. I had an early, early version of Fruity Loops I stole online. Where did you get started? How did you get started? Who helped you? What were your early experiments like?

In fourth grade, I played the trumpet for a few months, but it was way too loud, so I couldn’t really practice. Then I asked my dad for a guitar when I was in seventh grade because I was really into Arctic Monkeys and Fall Out Boy. He got me this busted-ass ukulele from the flea market and was like, “If you could learn to play on this, then you could learn to play a guitar.” And I was like, “Okay. No.” So, my thing was: I was always obsessed with lyrics. That was a part of the reason why I love Fall Out Boy so much. There’s so many bars in Fall Out Boy songs. Shout out my Jamaican cousin, Pete Wentz.

Listen! Black people, we out here, the real light skins, we out here, we got bars.

Right, exactly. So there’s that. And then also [Lil] Wayne’s run from 2005 to 2012 was…

Legendary.

Yes. He was saying things that no one had said before in the history of the English language, just combining words in a way that was so novel, so crazy, so genius. So I was writing stuff from that time, and I think that was my engagement with music in a capacity where I felt like I was actually going somewhere.

When it came to production, in college, I got my first Mac product and immediately was on GarageBand doing that. And I was going to school for film, and I took a film scoring class that basically taught you Logic. “This is what compression does, this is what distortion does, this is what blah, blah, blah does.” And I had a base-level understanding. So from that point, I was making experimental… It pretty much always was industrial, either house or hip-hop music. So I remember there was one song where I peeled an orange and I just was trying to make…

Make that into the beat.

Right. And it wasn’t even from an avant-garde kind of place, it’s that I literally was just like, “What is a synth?”

So, it wasn’t like a daily, everyday thing, but I was keeping up with it. And when I first moved to New York, the music scene here was great. The comedy scene here is great. I can do both. And the first few months I was doing that. And then at a certain point, I was like, okay, I am too unemployed right now. One of these things is already an egregious assault to the pockets of any individual. Both of these things, I’m making negative money right now.

Then fast forward to 2020. I was really gearing up with standup at that time. So I was doing a lot of live shows and live event stuff. And when that was gone, I was like, okay, I have time to really buckle down and focus on making songs. I had for the longest time, been a writer and been writing things. And then I added on the experimental sound, like playing with sound and stuff. I was like, okay, what would it be like if I just genuinely tried to make some stuff? So at first, they were mostly jokes. I had one song that went platinum on my alt Twitter account that was about me being in a love triangle with Mitch McConnell and Madea.

A lot of your brethren in the comedy realm, your boy Hannibal (Buress, who raps under the nom de guerre Eshu Tune), your boy Zack (Fox, who recently released his single “Dummy”), they’re coming over on our side.

Jay Versace making beats.

What do you make of that? And why do you think the bars have stepped up so much? Because they’re all so good at it, I think is the thing that’s really stood out for me.

It’s funny, I was just thinking about this the other day, specifically thinking of Jay Versace, Zack Fox, Hannibal, people who are known to be funny, and then they go into music and it’s like, wait, okay, you’re kind of like… You’re hitting.

And even vice versa, in the other direction. I feel like it comes from the fact that even in the beginning stages of hip-hop, it wasn’t necessarily just music. There was just so much else built out around it. And it was an all-encompassing… Literally go way back, that one Hannibal joke where he is like, “Hip-hop. It started in the park.” That old school, that era, there was DJing, there was toasting, there was break dancing. There was rap. There were all these different components that were under the umbrella of the same culture. And I think that it never fully lost that, at least from how I’ve seen it.

There are Lil Wayne bars that are so funny. I look at someone like Vince Staples, he is a situational comedian on some of those songs.

He’s so funny.

Yeah, so funny. And the turns of phrase, the wordplay, there’s so many things that are foundational to standup, or to sitcoms, or to comedy in general. That I think there’s so much cross-pollination, it would just make sense at a certain point. I also think that the very stringent, “Oh, you do this one thing, you can’t do this other thing” — that just doesn’t feel like a Black thing to me.

I don’t know anybody that only does one thing.

Yeah. I didn’t grow up like that. Going to church, they were going to make you get up there and sing. They were going to make you get up there and dance.

You had to do the Christmas program. You had to learn sign language.

Exactly. I remember signing songs and shit. There was just a sense of art being something used to express an idea or yourself or this thing. Not necessarily it being something that is behind a closed door that only select chosen people can access. It’s more so these things are just an extension of what it means to be human. I feel like once you tap into that, it’s hard to listen to people being like, “You can’t do that. You only do this.”

Respect. So if there was one song out of the whole project that someone could listen to and get what you’re going for, which one is it going to be?

Impossible to answer. I think a part of why I made this project and sequenced it and why it came together the way that it did, was because of the fact that I felt like in everything else I was doing, I had to distill and boil down essentially myself into an easily understood, digestible, bite-sized little capsule. And with this project, it’s like I can’t pick exactly one thing. I would say though, if I had to tell someone to listen to one song, I would say “26.” Short and sweet.

Coming up on the close of the interview, I know you do a lot of interviews. I have to do a lot of interviews. You hear all the same questions, I have to ask all the same questions. What’s something that you’ve always wanted to talk about and you go into interviews, you’re like, I wish they would ask me about blank. And they never do.

I feel like it’s a question that I was kind of asking myself going into this project, or going into the release of this project and putting it together. Why? What was my reasoning for this project?

I think on a level, the answer is simply because I could. There’s definitely that. But then moreover, I think this project kind of felt like a record in the sense that it was really recording a period of time in my life and how I felt about music in general. The music that I listened to, where music was going, the internet, how the internet plays into music, how the internet has played into my life. How these technologies shape how we experience art, and whatever content it is that we’re consuming through the technology. And how that by extension affects our life. Even with the cover, there’s these memory sticks, that I’m holding this hand and there’s this hand holding me.

And with the sequencing and everything, I kind of wanted to replicate right now what the experience of listening to music for me at least, was like. It’s constant genre-changing, flipping through things, listening to a song for this amount of time, and then going and listening to the rest of a song. And that experience was really what I was trying to capture and replicate. I think the act of trying to honestly sum up what you’re feeling right now, what you’re seeing in the world right now, I respond to that in a work regardless of when it’s made. Seeing someone’s honest take on something is one of the most valuable things that you can offer up as someone creating something. And I like to think that’s what I was trying to do here.

So let’s say next year I’m walking around on Sunset, I bump into Jaboukie on Sunset, I say, “Jaboukie, what’s up man? How you doing?” And you’re like, “Aaron, what’s going on, bro? How you feel?” And then I say, “What have you been up to this last year?” What do you want to be able to tell me about the year intervening?

Whoa. I want to be able to say that SAG and WGA met all of their demands and more, and we vanquished the AI overlords who were coming to end our professions. And since then I’ve done a bunch of acting shit, toured, and have worked on some of my own shit.

Definitely when you come to LA, I will come see you, man. I will definitely come to see you.

Yeah, yeah, that might be pretty soon.

Tell them to let me know so I can go. And if you guys need me on the picket line, I will take some time off next week. [Editor’s Note: Aaron does not have permission to skip work to picket LOL]

All right. I will never forget. It’s not a lick, it’s luck.

It’s not a lick. It’s luck.

Yeah. I’m never going to forget that. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that moment with me.

All Who Can’t Hear Must Feel is out now via Interscope Records. Get it here.

SZA has been teasing her video for the SOS track “Snooze.” The anticipation is high considering her epic video for her hit “Kill Bill,” packed with action and melodrama. It even had a cameo from Vivica A. Fox, who appeared in the iconic film of the same title.

The “Snooze” video does not disappoint. It flashes through different scenes of her with an array of lovers, one of them being Justin Bieber. There’s also Woody McClain, Young Mazino, and Benny Blanco. There’s a lot of cuddling, and one lover even eats french fries off of her bottom. There are some fights, and Bieber smokes a lot of weed. At one point, she seduces a robot, which was previously teased in a clip.

About appearing in the “Kill Bill” video, Fox said, “When I got it, I was surprised, to be honest with you. Cause they called… [It] took them five days to finally decide that they were going to hire me, ’cause I think they wanted Uma Thurman.”

“But when you think about it, it’s a little bit more fitting for SZA and Vivica to be together because we’re both African American women, and when it came out, people just ran with it,” she continued. “They were like, ‘They’re going to make Kill Bill 3, finally.’ Because people have been waiting for Kill Bill 3 for such a long time and see my daughter get revenge on Uma.”

Watch the video for “Snooze” above.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE – There’s no wrong answer here, but still…

I’ve really been enjoying Justified: City Primeval. The show itself is fine, honestly, even if it doesn’t quite live up to the original. How could it, though? That was such a great show, top to bottom, beginning to end, thanks in large part to a slew of great villains led by Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder. But even without all that, even with a new setting and new bad guys and periodic appearances by the Albanian mob, it’s still been a fun summer watch. And I think the main reason is that I really just missed seeing Timothy Olyphant swaggering across my television screen as Raylan Givens. Just a perfect pairing of character and actor.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I could probably watch him play Raylan forever. I would be happy to do a Justified spinoff every few years, or, if that’s too much work, I would be just as happy to parachute him into other shows in character as Raylan for a season or even just a few episodes. I was thinking about this a lot this week, just the idea of Raylan popping up in my other shows to engage in shootouts and witty repartee with other characters, and I actually started getting kind of excited about it. This happens to me sometimes. I’m very normal.

And yes, while the simplest answer is “all of them,” I did get to thinking about some specific shows and scenarios it would be fun to see Raylan saunter into. It’s a fun little game to play if you have a few minutes to spare this weekend or even if you don’t. Tell the cop who pulled you over for blowing the red light that this is why you were distracted. I feel like you’ll get out of the ticket if they watch the show. Worth a shot, at least.

Anyway, here’s what I got so far…

Barry — Raylan interrogating Bill Hader. Showing up at the Chechen mob meeting to question NoHo Hank. This second thing especially. Get a good mental image of that one.

The Bear — I just like the idea of Raylan as a customer and getting into it with Richie a little bit. Also, Raylan is too skinny. He could use a sandwich or two.

Succession — My two lanky boys Raylan and Cousin Greg having a nice chat over a glass of bourbon, maybe Greg helping out with an investigation. I would pay good money to see him in the Wynnebago.

The Righteous Gemstones — Am I listing this one just to get Olyphant and Goggins back on my screen together, even if there’s probably not a good reason for Raylan Givens to cross paths with Baby Billy Freeman? I mean, yes. But I refuse to apologize for it.

The Afterparty — Raylan Givens investigating a murder with Sam Richardson and Tiffany Haddish with a different genre of filmmaking being skewered each episode. This one could be fun just to stop the most serious man alive into one of the silliest shows on television.

The Mandalorian — I mean, okay, technically Olyphant is already in this show as a laser-toting space cowboy. And maybe it would be weird to have two of him in there, with one wearing capes and helmets and the other wearing denim jackets and cowboy hats. But, on the other hand, I think I would like it. Has to count for something.

I could go on. And I will in my brain. Definitely all weekend and maybe forever and probably sometime when I’m watching an old episode of Columbo and start picturing Raylan Givens and Columbo trying to solve a murder together. But I feel like this is a pretty good place to stop, if only because this can only get stupider from here. Tinker with it yourself a little bit, though. Expand it to movies. Picture Raylan and John Wick facing each other down in a rain-soaked alley. Or him and Benoit Blanc teaming up in a Knives Out. Or him and Dominic Toretto stopping some madman from trying to blow up the moon in a Fast & Furious movie. There are worse ways to spend a rainy afternoon.

ITEM NUMBER TWO – Barbie is going to take over Halloween

Wellllll it’s the end of August already, which means a few things. It means it’s starting to get dark out earlier. It means football season is getting underway. And it means, somehow, that it’s time to start thinking about your Halloween costume already, especially if you wanna go as something Barbie-themed, as the biggest movie of the summer is already selling out at your various spooky season websites. Here, look.

“Adult Skating Barbie” is sold out. So is “Adult Western Barbie” (“Adult Gingham Dress” — hat included! — is coming soon). But “Pink Power Jumpsuit Barbie” and “Weird Barbie” are available, as is “Rebel Rocker Ken,” “Skating Ken,” and “Western Ken.” Sadly, Spirit isn’t selling an Allan costume, probably because the servers would crash from everyone trying to buy it at once.

I love it. I mean, yeah, sure, maybe “an impossibly proportioned pink daydream based on a doll and/or Margot Robbie” isn’t the greatest message to be sending the young women of America, especially if the nuance of the movie gets lost in the shuffle, but still. I dig it. Barbie was too much fun. Gosling was a damn delight. As we’ve discussed. Look at this freaking guy.

Variety did a write-up on this whole behind-the-scenes feature on the making of “I’m Just Ken” that dropped this week and, if you’re wondering if Gosling is exactly as charming as he seems to be, well…

In the four-minute featurette, Gosling goes through the various stages of rehearsal as he makes Gerwig burst out laughing as he strips off his white fur coat. The video intercuts clips of Gosling practicing his moves in sweatpants and a backwards hat in a dance studio with footage from the finished film.

The video also features footage of Gosling playing drums on the track, various Kens contributing backup vocals and Guns N’ Roses axeman Slash recording its guitar solo.

There are lots of things I want to do if/when I discover/invent a time machine (Back to the Future gambling scenario first and foremost), but let’s go ahead and add “tell leather-clad Guns N Roses fans in the 1980s that Slash will be shredding a guitar solo for a Barbie movie in 2033” to the list. A little treat for Brian.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – But how can you tell?

There’s a whole big interview with Michael Mann over at Variety this week where he touches on everything from his new Ferrari movie to various other highlights from his long career in Hollywood. Which is great. Because it means someone had a chance to ask him about Heat, and specifically the scene where Al Pacino shouts like a madman at poor Hank Azaria. The one up at the top of this section. The one where he contorts his face into a full-on demon mask and shouts about a “GREAT ASS.” One of the finest moments in all of cinema.

Anyway, apparently Pacino did a bunch of takes and got a little wilder with each one, which is fun. I would love to see the outtakes of it all, just to see what didn’t make the cut. And when I’m looking through the outtakes, maybe I’ll stop and look at this one, too.

“I neglected to tell him that we had a habit of doing this,” says Mann. “Al just flipped this guy up and down and cut loose, and that look of shock and amazement on Azaria’s face is because we’re going completely off the script into something totally wild.”

It was rumored Pacino’s character was a cokehead, something Pacino and Mann have copped to in recent years. But Mann gives me one more detail. He tells me he shot a scene of Pacino snorting coke off a dagger he carried in the small of his back. Mann says he cut it, telling me it was “too strong a message.”

It really says a lot about this scene — and the entire performance — that “snorting coke off a dagger” is somehow less subtle than what actually showed up on the screen. I’m so proud of everyone involved in all of this. Good for them.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – You guys wanna come over and talk about Suits?

One of the weirder and funnier developments of this summer has been everyone kind of discovering Suits. You remember Suits. The USA series about a little ruffian who fakes his way into a high-powered law firm and ends up hooking up with a paralegal played by Meghan Markle. The one that aired like a decade ago and ended in 2019. That one. It ended up on Netflix a few months ago and, holy crap, you guys, so many people are watching Suits right now. Like, record-breaking numbers of people. Look at this.

The USA Network drama has become the second most-streamed series ever recorded by Nielsen when considering viewership totals over six consecutive weeks.

More simply put, “Wednesday” was watched for just under 20.3 billion minutes in its first six weeks of availability when it premiered last fall, and “Suits” has now exceeded that with just over 20.3 billion minutes between June 19 and July 30. “Stranger Things” is the only title that has ever exceeded those totals, with 27.8 billion minutes watched over six weeks when Season 4 debuted last summer.

This is… crazy, right? It’s a little crazy. It would be like if suddenly the whole world got way into Burn Notice out of nowhere. Which would honestly be fine with me. And it means I can accost strangers and say things like “Louis Litt is at it again” and there’s a chance they’ll nod knowingly instead of looking at me like I’m a crazy person. I really did used to have a lot of opinions about Suits.

Anyway, lots of people are trying to make sense of it all, this whole sudden Suits phenomenon. The best explanation I’ve seen so far came from my good buddy and former podcast partner Alan Sepinwall.

The answer, I think, gets back to my stylist’s explanation for why she put it on that morning: It was there at the top of the app when she turned it on. In streaming, there is still Netflix and then there is everyone else. And there is the priceless real estate as the promoted show or movie on the app, and then there is everything else even on Netflix. Peacock, though it has a good library (and some excellent originals like Poker Face), just doesn’t have the omnipresence in our lives to make a library title go viral. Even Hulu (which has Burn Notice and White Collar) doesn’t, and also has such a confusingly-designed interface that few would even notice anything getting a big promotional push. Netflix, on the other hand, is everywhere, and at a certain point this must have all snowballed: People start watching Suits, leading to them telling their friends that they’re watching Suits, leading to articles (like this one) about how many people are watching Suits, leading to even more people watching Suits, and on and on.

Which brings me back to my original question…

You guys wanna come over and talk about Suits?

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Everything you know is a lie

If you saw me out and about this week and I looked perplexed, like maybe my entire reality had been shattered and I was coming to grips with a new and harsh world I didn’t recognize, maybe it’s because I had just seen this interview with Matthew McConaughey’s wife, Camila. I mean, look at this.

“When we first started dating, it was this image of Matthew of getting high, laid back, no shirt, whatever,” she said on the Southern Living’s Biscuits & Jam podcast. “Which I’m like, ‘The guy doesn’t even smoke. What is this vision coming from?’”

Hmm.

Hmmmmm.

Maybe it was all the bongos.

That could have been it.

I feel like you aren’t even allowed to play bongos if you’re not high.

Like the Venn diagram of “dudes who play bongos” and “dudes who smoke weed” is just one big circle.

Maybe that’s why, Camila.

Maybe.

“He’s actually the opposite, and he’s like his mom,” she said. “She’s very organized, very minimalistic, very on time, very prepared, and he gets a lot of those traits from her.”

I’ll tell you what I think is happening here…

You ever have a buddy who was a real wildass for a long time but then started dating someone new and settled down a lot? Like, they used to be out all hours of the night raging but now suddenly they have a lot of opinions about which stands to go to at the farmer’s market and their new boyfriend or girlfriend thinks this is just how they’ve always been? I think this is one of those situations. She only knows the farmer’s market guy.

There’s still a hellion in there, though. I know it. We just need Woody Harrelson to roll through town some weekend to draw it out of him. And maybe film it. I would watch that reality show.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Shawn:

This is hilarious. I must know everything about this at once.

The city is in a state of shock over the fate of two hometown heroes: Eagles starting quarterback Archie Hughes, and his even more famous wife, Grammy-winning singer Francine Hughes.

One spouse is murdered. The other is suspect #1.

Even before the case hits the courtroom, it’s the hottest ticket in town.

For the defense: Cooper Lamb, private investigator to the stars.

For the prosecution: Veena Lion, a sleuth so bright she’s got to wear shades.

Between them, they know every secret in Philadelphia. Together, they prove how two wrongs can make a right. They are Lion & Lamb.

I have three thoughts about this book, all of which are equally important:

• I love that James Patterson is out here just mailing in silly pun titles for books about rock stars maybe murdering their famous quarterback husbands
• It’s a lot of fun to imagine the media circus that would take place if this really happened
• Freakin’ Go Birds, baby

Really solid book chat here.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Orlando!

Something’s been monkeying around with people a half-hour north of Orlando.

Kim Bialobos, a shift manager at an Orange City Popeyes, said it caught her eye while making preparations at the drive-thru window.

I love this guy.

“Corner of my eye, and I’m like this cannot be possible,” Bialobos said. “And I’m like, I’m telling everybody, ‘Listen, there’s a monkey!”

She shared pictures she took as the cheeky monkey cruised around, finally hopping over the fence separating the restaurant from a wooded area.

The only way I could love this more is if this guy stole a bunch of biscuits. Just a big bag in each hand running off down the alley. No jury would convict him.

“It’s just, we would send someone out to that area, no luck,” El-Shami said. “We can’t find it, and it just kept going on several days, throughout the several days.”

Bialobos says the monkey is pretty big.

“He looked very well groomed. He was very maintained,” she said. “He looked healthy. You know, he didn’t look like a wild monkey.”

I love the handsome monkey. I hope he puts on a little suit and swings by this Popeyes every day at lunch. Maybe he can grab a chicken sandwich and bring it over to my place. We can make it a regular thing.

He and I can be best friends.

American Horror Story: Asylum (the best season of American Horror Story imo) had a strong cast. Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, and Jessica Lange were there because it wouldn’t be a Ryan Murphy show without at least one of them, but the rest of the ensemble included Lily Rabe, James Cromwell, Zachary Quinto, Joseph Fiennes, Chloë Sevigny, and Ian McShane as MURDER SANTA.

Pretty good! But you know what Asylum didn’t have? One of the biggest movie stars in the world.

American Horror Story casting director Eric Dawson told Backstage that Margot Robbie auditioned for season two of the FX series. “Margot is probably one of my favorite auditions of all time, and it was right before she broke out. She was such a star. It was crazy, her star appeal when she walked in the room,” he said. But, for whatever reason, Robbie didn’t get the part.

“Even though she didn’t get that role, that was one of those things as a casting director where you go: This is a star, what do we do with her? Immediately, though, she was out of our realm of possibility of hiring. But that’s really the fun part of casting, is seeing the people whose careers are just rising.”

American Horror Story: Asylum premiered in 2012. A year later, Robbie, then best known for Australian soap opera Neighbours, starred in The Wolf of Wall Street. This Barbie has no regrets.

(Via Backstage)

Happy Bottoms Day to those who celebrate.

The Fight Club-meets-high school sex comedy is out now in limited theaters before going wide next week. Stars Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby) and Ayo Edebiri (The Bear) haven’t been able to promote the movie, due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, but hopefully this statistic is enough to get people to check it out: Bottoms is one of the best reviewed movies of 2023.

Bottoms has a 99 percent “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 69 (appropriate) positive reviews from critics compared to only one negative assessment of the comedy. It also has a sparkling 100 percent audience score, an arguably even more impressive achievement considering how much trolls enjoy sabotaging movies about women, let alone queer women.

The only other 2023 movie with a 99 percent rating: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, the delightful adaptation of Judy Blume’s YA novel. The handful of 98 percents include Blackberry, Rye Lane, Joyland, and Anatomy of a Fall, which won the Palme d’Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Here’s more on Bottoms, which was directed and co-written by Emma Seligman: “Two girls, PJ and Josie, start a fight club as a way to lose their virginities to cheerleaders. And their bizarre plan works! The fight club gains traction, and soon the most popular girls in school are beating each other up in the name of self-defense. But PJ and Josie find themselves in over their heads and in need of a way out before their plan is exposed.”

You can watch the trailer below.

Iggy Azalea is clocking back into work. The rapper has been enjoying her newly found success on OnlyFans, but as promised, her new music has arrived. Iggy’s thirst for financial expansion, seen in the recent sale of her publishing catalog, is at the root of her new single, “Money Come.”

The record — produced by Tricky Stewart, JerkPoP, and Nana Afriyie — is the first offering from her forthcoming album. In the song, Iggy is locked into her wealth goal, tuning her haters out as she raps, “Say you gonna run up on who? I need proof / These b*tches p*ssies, their mouths are too loose / Still know some neighborhood boys who can shoot / I can put it on your head and they can put you on the news / P*ssy so wet, he need an anchor / Where that b*tch talkin’ sh*t? I wanna thank her / ‘Cause even though I don’t f*ck with you hoes / All the hatin’ kept my eyes on the money like a banker / Come baby, come baby, money make me come.”

For the official video, directed by Christian Breslaver, is an orgasmic overthrowing of the patriarchy and not in a Barbie movie sort of way.
Conceptually, “Money Come” is a crossbred of Meghan Trainor’s “Nice To Meet Ya” and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Thot Sh*t” videos as Iggy, along with her fellow women in combat armed to the teeth, storm the office to take back control of the boardroom as a result the bag.

Watch Azalea’s video for “Money Come” above.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

THIS JUST IN: Love is beautiful.

Just ask news anchor Cornelia Nicholson, who thought it was business as usual while reading a breaking news bulletin.

That is until she realized it was a brilliant marriage proposal in disguise.

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The look of shock and delight on Nicholson’s face while she reads, “Coming up right now, we have the story of two young journalists…who just so happened to find love in the same industry?” as pictures of herself with boyfriend (and fellow reporter) Riley Nagel pop up onscreen are priceless enough.

But when Nagel actually appears in the studio to give his “special report”? That’s something worthy of a rom-com. Not only did he totally master the art of surprise, but he thoughtfully listed out all the things that he loved about Nicholson before popping the question. And he did it all without ever losing his news anchor voice.

Watch:

@ceraynicholson Still at a loss for words😭💍 @Riley Nagel hid this so well. I am so excited for our future together #shesafiance #proposalvideo #engagement #news #chattanooga #localnews #love #wedding #surpriseproposal ♬ original sound – Ceray Nicholson

Nicholson wasn’t the only one left swooning after Nagel’s epic proposal. Check out what other folks had to say:

“As a producer, I would have been so giddy the whole show waiting on this. Congrats.”

“This was the sweetest, most gentle proposal. I’m crying.”

“A legend! I’ve never seen a news proposal.”

“I love hearing her voice when she realizes.”

“BREAKING NEWS: I’M SOBBING CONGRATS.”

“I know everybody behind the cameras is crying. This is too much for my heart.”

Creative, sincere proposals just never get old, do they?