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Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge felt vindicated in his belief that “aliens f*cking exist” last week, but his interest in the extraterrestrial took a backseat to his stance on human rights while attending The 1975’s Lollapalooza set on Friday, August 4.

“I guess myself ‘AND’ @the1975 won’t be going to Malaysia – just a couple dudes kissing during their phenomenal set at #lollapalooza,” DeLonge captioned an Instagram post showing him and The 1975 lead vocalist Matty Healy embracing.

DeLonge separately posted a video of the moment, writing, “@the1975 blew me away at Lollapalooza…. Great f*cking band. @trumanblack even gave me a quick kiss as a first time hello.”

Anybody who follows Healy and The 1975 knows Healy kissing people on stage isn’t out of the ordinary, and that tendency was a problem in Malaysia last month.

The 1975 were mid-set at Good Vibes Festival 2023 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia when Healy protested the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws with a speech. He and his bandmate sealed the message with a kiss. The set was cut short, with Healy informing the crowd that he and the band were now “banned” from Malaysia, and the festival’s remainder was subsequently canceled altogether (as confirmed by this official statement).

Most recently, The Guardian reported that the festival’s promoters, Future Sound Asia (FSA) “are now pursuing a claim against the British band calling on them to acknowledge liability and compensate FSA for damages incurred.”

The report continued, “If they fail to do so, FSA will take action in the UK. FSA claim that Healy’s actions ‘tarnished’ the festival’s reputation and that they ‘intentionally contravened the agreement [the band] had with FSA.’”

Of all the music festivals I have covered in the past few years as Hip-Hop Editor at Uproxx, 88rising’s Head In The Clouds Festival has been my favorite. That was true of last year’s edition of the fest, which I both streamed online and attended in person, and remained true of this year’s iteration, which returned to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena for another two days and nights highlighting global Asian talent from across a wide spectrum of genres.

Now, there’s no disrespect intended to Coachella or Rolling Loud, which both put on great shows in 2022 and 2023, respectively. But there are three areas which I consider pretty much essential to the music festival experience and Head In The Clouds has just consistently delivered in all of them both years I attended. From the music to presentation to the vibes of the crowd, Head In The Clouds LA offers one of the best music experiences around, despite its lower profile — or maybe even because of it.

After all, one of the main complaints you hear from festival-goers these days is how “corporate” so many of them have gotten. Sometimes, it can feel like the sponsorships have overridden the focus on the music. Plus, since music discovery is so driven by algorithms and streaming, oftentimes, it can seem as though the booking agents for the bigger fests are just continually grabbing from the same overcrowded pool of talent, resulting in a lot of lineups that share a lot of the same names.

Because Head In The Clouds has a focus on the artists signed to 88rising and a specific, mostly untapped niche, its lineups often present a variety of fresh acts — many of whom are performing in the US for the first time. This means that the potential to discover something truly new is higher than the clouds, as acts from Korea and Japan share their excitement to perform for a whole new set of fans. On Sunday, I learned about Korean R&B singers Yerin Baek and Zion.T and Japanese girl-pop group XG, whose unique takes on familiar grooves perked up my ears and prompted frantic Google sessions.

Meanwhile, being on the fringes of US mainstream awareness gives many of these artists room to experiment. To put it bluntly, anyone with eyes and ears can see how quickly most mainstream popular artists are pigeonholed due to their ethnic background. While the lines between genres have blurred in recent years, you can still see how Black artists in rock are considered novelties, white R&B singers are shunted into a generic “pop” title, and artists who start in one place stylistically can find it nearly impossible to shake off a genre tag no matter how drastically that style shifts over multiple projects.

But because Asian acts are so overlooked by the American mainstream (to the American mainstream’s detriment, I might add) and folks of Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Malaysian, Thai, or dozens of other origins don’t fall so easily into the reductive American racial binary, the artists highlighted at Head In The Clouds get to proudly draw influences from across a wide spectrum without judgment or expectation. This leads to stuff like Zior Park’s inventive blend of operatic pop and hip-hop, Eyedress’ nihilistic take on punk and folk, and NIKI being able to coolly swing back and forth between a T Swift-esque form of soft guitar pop to upbeat R&B.

And while it’d be nice to see artists like Filipino-American Lyn Lapid become huge stars, you also get the impression that without the pressure of appealing to a massive, four-quadrant audience, they get to just be themselves and make the music they want to make, which ultimately is more interesting than even the most innovative and experimental alt-pop stuff currently fighting for space on the airwaves lately.

Of course, the festival’s execution makes all this discovery possible, and that’s where Head In The Clouds shines for me. While Brookside at the Rose Bowl is relatively small, it still feels almost too large for this fest. It’s both cozy and roomy at the same time; where other, sprawling fests can make you walk up to a half-mile between the acts you want to see, feeling like a sardine in a can the whole time, the two stages (and the dance music tent) here are all just a couple of minutes’ walk from each other. While sitting by the golf course’s adorable water hazard to catch some shade, we could actually clearly hear both stages — which wasn’t a problem, since few enough of the acts overlapped.

Meanwhile, the grounds themselves are pretty (although the super warm weather lately made this year’s fest a lot dustier than last year’s), with glowing cloud installations dotted throughout the golf course. Each, of course, had a lengthy line of festival-goers looking to take a photo to remember their day. There’s also an animated cloud mascot — a combination of a mechanical gizmo and a projected face — atop the main stage, and its facial expressions often reflect the mood of the music (any time an artist mentioned “tears,” it would cry, which was just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen).

Also, the food is the greatest combination of items I’ve ever seen. My girl and I devoured a pair of pork belly bao … tacos, I guess … blending all kinds of different Asian cuisines, like a comestible metaphor for Head In The Clouds itself. Food trucks offered a variety of options — we went with garlic chili noodles from a truck called, fittingly, Noods — and even got our photo taken by an appreciative vendor of boba drinks and mochinuts (if you haven’t had mochi donuts, you’re missing out).

What made Head In The Clouds such a positive experience, though, was the vibe of the crowd. As much as some festivals are all about getting the audience to turn up and rage out, that can be an exhausting and anxiety-inducing experience. Not to sound like too much of a square, but watching folks get way too high and pass out or throw up from the hot sun and tightly-packed crowds isn’t something I usually walk away from feeling energized about. But the crowd at Head In The Clouds is there for the music, for the solidarity, to appreciate sharing in common a similar — but not monolithic — experience of existing in society in the paradoxical state of conspicuous and invisible at the same time. I can’t say I know it on the same level, but I can certainly relate.

There are still ways this fest can improve. While the experience inside the grounds is top notch, the parking situation is still a little nerve-wracking due to large chunks of the drive up to the parking area being unattended with few signs or landmarks to follow. At one point, I found myself driving through a residential neighborhood just hoping I was headed in the right direction. And while efforts were made to provide shade, those efforts could have been stronger (I get giving concertgoers more incentive to invest in VIP, where tables with umbrellas were set up, or buy umbrellas from the general store, but maybe put people over profit a little).

But these are minor quibbles against a sea of positive impressions. Give me a dozen festivals like Heads In The Clouds — niche, small fests dedicated to shared interest and a mellow good time — and, like the second stage at 88rising’s unique festival, I will have double happiness.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

When Offset announced his new single “Jealousy” with his wife Cardi B, many fans were awed that he somehow secured a cameo from legendary actress Jamie Lee Curtis in a preview for the song. The clip, which recreated an unusual 1988 interview between CNN’s Dr. Sonya Friedman and a seemingly unhinged James Brown, found Curtis taking on the role of Friedman and Offset giving the same sort of wildly improvised answers as Brown. Today, on Good Morning America, Offset explains how he got such a high-profile cameo.

“Jamie Lee Curtis is a real one,” he exclaimed. “How that happened is, I DMed Jamie Lee Curtis on Instagram and said, ‘Yo, I got an idea. I would love to work with you.’ So, she wrote me back so quick and she like, ‘Yeah, I got you, but you need to follow me.’” He says after she heard the idea, she was game… and the best part? All this took place after her recent Oscar win for her role in Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Offset also talks about his and Cardi’s kids, admitting that “for the girls, I’m a softie, but for the boys, I’m a disciplinarian,” and how being vulnerable as a man can be “challenging.” Check out the clip above for more, but don’t expect to hear his upcoming album’s title just yet; that’s apparently something he’s keeping tightly under wraps for the time being.

Donald Trump landed himself in hot water over the weekend after he fired off an all-caps threat on Truth Social after being specifically warned during his latest arraignment to stop targeting officers of the court. “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” the former president wrote, prompting the federal government to immediately move for a protective order. Judge Tanya Chutkan is now demanding a response from Trump’s legal team, who is already trying to wave the post away as “political speech.”

While Trump not being able to control his outbursts on social media is par for the course, the Morning Joe crew can’t believe that Republicans are sitting on their hands while Trump is publicly threatening judges and prosecutors.

“The silence is deafening,” Joe Scarborough said before tearing into the GOP, and his old pal Lindsey Graham.

Via Mediaite:

He’s gone full mobster here. And yet, no criticism from Republicans in the House, Republicans in the Senate, very little from the Republicans on the campaign trail. Let me say it again, he has threatened a federal prosecutor, and it seems the only thing Republicans know how to do is fall more meekly in line with him, like Lindsey Graham this past week. Just fall in line behind a guy who is behaving like a mobster and threatening a federal prosecutor.

While Republicans aren’t doing anything to rein in Trump, obviously, Special Counsel Jack Smith is watching his every move. However, that has yet to stop the former president. Even after the government filed for a protective order, Trump continued to rail against Judge Chutkan and refer to Smith as “deranged,” which has been his go-to insult for the special counsel.

(Via Mediaite)

Rootin’ tootin’ Lauren Boebert adores guns so much that she once (as shown above) open-carried in her now-defunct restaurant, Shooters Grill, in Rifle, Colorado. She also posed with a t-shirt that labeled guns as human-hole punchers, and she recently trashed a pin that was meant to commemorate a school shooting victim.

Her love for the Second Amendment does win fans over to the Boebert side, however. That led one of her followers to make an inquiry (while using this Getty image) to ask people if they’d want to “go shooting” with the lawmaker from Colorado. To that, Boebert posted an even more rootin’ tootin’ photo of herself while apparently operating an M203 grenade launcher, and that type of ammo (even training rounds) does not exactly sound like the cheapest hobby out there. This is perhaps literally rich, given that (only a few tweets prior) she had been complaining that “groceries are up” due to “Bidenomics.”

To that, Boebert’s followers were weighted in a blue-check way so that the thirsty responses floated to the top. However, it wasn’t lost on everyone that Boebert can “afford f*cking grenades,” so she “can afford avocados, too.”

Still, you gotta hand it to Boebert for some creative points. There’s a whole lot of right-wingers out there who have gun-filled Christmas card photos like she does, but FWIW, she one-upped them in outrageousness.

Matty Healy isn’t one to pass up a grand gesture, even if it’s against the law. In late July, Healy and The 1975 were performing at Good Vibes Festival 2023 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia when Healy protested the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws by kissing bandmate Ross MacDonald on stage.

The 1975’s set was cut short, and Healy informed the crowd he and the band had “just got banned” from Malaysia. The rest of the festival was subsequently canceled, as explained in a statement posted to its website that notes the cancelation was ordered by the Ministry Of Communications And Digital in response to “the controversial comments and remarks made by” Healy and The 1975.

That’s not the end of it.

According to The Guardian, Future Sound Asia (FSA), Good Vibes’ promoters, “are now pursuing a claim against the British band calling on them to acknowledge liability and compensate FSA for damages incurred.”

The publication relayed, “If they fail to do so, FSA will take action in the UK. FSA claim that Healy’s actions ‘tarnished’ the festival’s reputation and that they ‘intentionally contravened the agreement [the band] had with FSA.’”

The Guardian previously reported on July 26 that “a group of Malaysian musicians and festival vendors” were “preparing a class action lawsuit against The 1975.”

In the days after the festival’s cancelation, The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas commented on Instagram that Healy and The 1975’s performance “def helped the white outsider awareness” but “likely will change little to nothing in Malaysia.”

Healy also seemingly criticized Muse for adjusting their setlist to “entertain while also respecting the guidelines,” as Hello Universe co-founder Adam Ashraf told Rojak Daily.

All pilsners are lagers, but not all lagers are pilsners. This is because the pilsner is a style of pale lager. The pilsner is a great choice to drink any time of the year because of its floral hoppy flavor and crisp finish always works — rain or shine, snow or sun. That makes pilsners the perfect beer for a “desert island” option — or the beer you’d be happy drinking for the rest of your life.

Before we get to that, let’s dive into what a pilsner is. The classic, crisp, easy-drinking, and effortlessly refreshing beer gets its name from the city of Plzeň (Pilsen) in Czechia. This is where the pale lager “pilsner” was refined in 1842 when the iconic beer Pilsner Urquell was first brewed as a commercial beer by a Bavarian brewer, one Josef Groll. Fast forward a couple of centuries and pilsner’s biscuit-like malt backbone and use of bottom-fermenting yeast and floral hoppiness has made the style one of the biggest and most ubiquitous beer styles in the world. Another big reason for that belovedness is that pilsners are almost always sessional brews, clocking in at or under 5% ABV. Crisp, malty, easy-drinking, and accessible, what more could you want from beer?

Now, it’s time to make difficult choices. What if you were stranded on a desert island and you could only pick one to bring, which one would you choose? To help you choose, we asked some craft brewers to tell us the one pilsner they’d drink for the rest of their lives if they could only pick one. Keep reading to see them all.

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Firestone Walker Pivo Pils

Patrick Chavanelle, Senior R&D Brewer at Allagash Brewing Company in Portland, Maine

ABV: 5.3%

Average Price: $11 for a six-pack

The Beer:

The first time I had Firestone Walker’s Pivo Pils, I was down in Texas for a wedding. We went to a bar where I saw it on tap, and I ordered one. To set the scene, this was very much a social gathering, but all I did was sit in a corner and exclaim comments to myself after every sip like, ‘Oh God’ and ‘It smells so good’, etc. I wanted to bathe in it.

Tasting Notes:

Pivo is an amazing showcase of Noble hop character that I’d never experienced before in a beer. It has punchy grassy, spicey, aromatics along with some lemon zest that is so inviting. It’s a beer that will never grow old to me. I love it.

Bierstadt Lagerhaus Slow Pour Pilsner

Fal Allen, Brewmaster at Anderson Valley Brewing Co. in Booneville, California

ABV: 5.1%

Average Price: $13 for a four-pack of 16-ounce cans

The Beer:

If there could be only one, that would have to be Bierstadt Lagerhaus Slow Pour Pilsner on draught. It’s beautifully pale yellow and crystal clear with a solid dense head of foam.

Tasting Notes:

It begins with an aroma of toasted biscuits and light floral hops. The taste is crisp and bready, full of its slow cold German lager yeast fermentation. There’s a snappy carbonation that lingers on the pallet. This beer finishes dry with a slight hint of minerality and a touch of sweetness. There’s excellent balance with a high drinkability rating.

Troegs Sunshine Pils

George Hummel, Grain Master of My Local Brew Works in Philadelphia

ABV: 4.5%

Average Price: $12 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Nothing beats a nice fresh can of Troegs Sunshine Pils. Once relegated to seasonal status, I was overjoyed when they freed it to year-round availability.

Tasting Notes:

It’s crisp with a firm bitterness that steps aside to allow a peek of bready malt. The flavor and aromatics just drip with floral Hallertau hops.

Rothaus Pils Tannenzäpfle

Joe Mashburn, Head Brewer at Night Shift Brewing in Boston

ABV: 5.1%

Average Price: $17 for a six-pack

The Beer:

If I was only going to drink one pilsner for the rest of my life, it would be Rothaus Pils Tannenzäpfle. It’s pricey for a 6-pack but delicious if you take the plunge.

Tasting Notes:

“Tannenzäpfle” is a “fir cone,” and this pilsner has a great spicy character that reminds you of being in a forest.

Notch Session Pils

Zach Fowle, Head of Marketing at Arizona Wilderness Brewing Co. in Phoenix, Arizona

ABV: 4%

Average Price: $11 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Notch Session Pils by Notch Brewing Co. is my pick. Calling this a “Session Pils” may seem a little redundant, but crushable low-alcohol versions of popular styles are Notch’s whole bag. Lesser inebriating power takes away nothing from this Czech-style lager.

Tasting Notes:

It jabs the nose with dead-on peppery and lightly floral Saaz hops alongside a hint of sulfur threaded through doughy croissant-like malts. On the tongue, subtle malt sweetness spreads under earthy/herbal hops, trailing off at the finish into a gentle but noticeable bitterness.

Kent Falls The Hollow

Matthew Steinberg, co-founder and Head Brewer of Exhibit ‘A’ Brewing Company in Framingham, Massachusetts

ABV: 5%

Average Price: $15 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Kent Falls Brewing is one of my favorite breweries. Their focus on quality and the use of locally sourced malts just hit right for me. The Hollow is their house pilsner. Kent Falls brewers really dig deep into tradition and care deeply for their roots and place. They have a northeast sensibility focused on farmhouse beers.

Tasting Notes:

The Hollow is dynamic, crisp, and clean and is hopped with Brewer’s Gold that is grown on their farm.

Wiseacre Tiny Bomb

Garth Beyer, certified Cicerone and owner of Garth’s Brew Bar in Madison, Wisconsin

ABV: 4.5%

Average Price: $11 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Wiseacre’s Tiny Bomb is an epic pilsner. It elevates your standard pilsner style with a bit of local wildflower honey.

Tasting Notes:

There are delicate floral aromas and a steady sweetness. It’s a pilsner that feels like it gives you energy. A light version of liquid bread, if you will.

Trumer Pils

Rob Lightner, co-founder of East Brother Beer Company in Richmond, California

ABV: 4.9%

Average Price: $11 for a six-pack

The Beer:

If I could only drink one pilsner for the rest of my life, it would have to be Trumer Pils. That has always been one of my go-to pilsners and served as a model and inspiration for us when we created East Brother Bo Pils.

Tasting Notes:

Trumer is crystal-clear, starts with a touch of honey, and shifts to a grassiness on the palate followed by a bready finish. It’s always consistent and always delicious.

Silvaticus Sovereign Pils

Frederic Yarm, USBG bartender at Josephine in Somerville, Massachusetts

ABV: 5.3%

Average Price: Limited Availability

The Beer:

Brewery Silvaticus specializes in German lagers and Belgian ales and makes my favorite pilsner that I could return to again and again without getting tired.

Tasting Notes:

Their Sovereign Pils is an unfiltered kellerbier-style pilsner with delightful cracker, honey-floral, lemon, and grassy notes. Pair that with any of the brewery taproom’s German foods — like their pretzel or pickle plate — and I’m in heaven.

Bitburger Premium Pilsner

Scott Wenger, bartender at Hula Bay Club in Tampa

ABV: 4.8%

Average Price: $12 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Bitburger Premium Pilsner is known for its hoppy, crisp, lightly bitter flavor profile. It’s definitely a beer that belongs in your refrigerator all the time.

Tasting Notes:

It has a crisp, refreshing flavor that is more floral than sweet and enough hops to balance it all out.

When it comes to her peanut allergy, Leah Williams isn’t messing around. After airline employees refused to make an announcement about her condition during a recent flight from Germany to London, so the 27-year-old passenger woman took drastic action by literally buying up every single pack of peanuts on the plane.

According to Williams, the situation went south on her return flight. Earlier in the week, the Eurowings cabin crew had no problem alerting passengers about Williams’ peanut allergy. But the next airline staff she encountered were not so accommodating and told Williams that the announcement is against policy.

“He wasn’t even looking me in the eye,” Williams said about the Eurowings attendant. “I think he was getting frustrated I was holding up the line.”

When Williams learned that the crew would be selling peanuts during the flight, she took action. Via Insider:

“I said: ‘I’ll buy them all so you can’t serve them. I don’t care how much it is. If you’re not willing to help me this is the only thing I can do,’” she told Insider.

Flight attendants then counted all 48 packs of peanuts to ensure they were charging her the correct amount, which ended up being 168 euros, or about $185, Williams said. “The worst thing was they actually asked if I wanted to take the peanuts, and I said obviously not.”

According to Williams, she has yet to get a response from Eurowings to either offer her a refund or adjust its procedures on dealing with peanut allergies. However, the airline did offer a comment to Insider.

“We are very sorry that the flight with us did not go as smoothly as desired and we regret any inconvenience this has caused Leah Williams,” a representative said before adding that the “cabin crew offered to inform passengers sitting near Willams of her allergy but that she later decided to buy all the packets of peanuts.”

(Via Insider)

This Barbie is a tornado of sharks.

Sharknado, the B-movie sensation starring Tara Reid, Ian Ziering, and hundreds of man-eating sharks that spawned multiple sequels, came out 10 years ago. I can’t put into words why this is upsetting, but it is. To celebrate the occasion, The Asylum released a Barbie-themed poster to promote the film playing in theaters for a “two-night-only cinema event” on August 15-16.

Here it is:

The 10th anniversary cut of Sharknado includes “new kills” and “new thrills,” according to the trailer above, as well as “more sharks, more ‘nado.” Considering how much money Meg 2: The Trench made this weekend, there’s clearly an appetite for big sharks eating people.

The success of Sharknado led to Sharknado 2: The Second One, Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, and The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time, as well as spinoffs Lavalantula, Sharknado: Heart of Sharkness, and 2 Lava 2 Lantula. But the follow-ups couldn’t capture the WTF thrills of the original Sharknado, which almost went by a different title.

“I had made a film for The Asylum called American Warships, and we were talking about what to do next. They said they wanted me to do a movie called Shark Storm. And I said, ‘That sounds like a terrible idea. Haven’t we had enough shark movies and enough storm movies?’ They went away grumbling,” screenwriter Thunder Levin told the Hollywood Reporter. But a month later, they returned with a different title: Sharknado.

The rest is George R.R. Martin getting eaten by a shark history.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

Dua Lipa welcomed Elton John on her Dua Lipa: At Your Service podcast in early 2022 and told him her third album was “maybe 50 percent of the way” finished and “starting to take shape.” By the end of the year, that progress report was outdated.

“It’s taken a complete turn as I’ve carried on working, and I really feel now that it’s starting to sound cohesive. So I’m going to keep writing in the early months of the new year and see where that takes me,” Lipa told Variety.

This morning (August 7), we received a fresh update. Within a spread for The New York Times‘ T Magazine, Lipa confirmed her third album is “due for release in 2024,” as written by Kurt Soller. She didn’t divulge much but did concede the highly anticipated project will feature “more personal” material.

Soller provided a bit more context:

“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, a rumor she all but confirms by denying: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she says, then looks away and laughs a little. Lipa’s dressed — almost studiously — in pop star-off-duty drag: Ugg slip-ons, baggy white jeans, an old Elton John T-shirt, a few diamond-encrusted hoops in each ear.”

Lipa previously released her self-titled debut in June 2017 and the Grammy-winning Future Nostalgia in March 2020. Most recently, Lipa delivered the Barbie movie theme song, “Dance The Night,” peaking at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100.

See more from Lipa’s T Magazine spread below.