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Earthgang’s Bag With Hard Drives Of New Music Went Missing During Grammys Weekend

Earthgang probably had a great time in Los Angeles for the Grammys over the weekend. However, the trip didn’t end like they thought it would: The duo recently took to social media to ask fans to help them find a bag, containing hard drives with new music, that is now missing.

“This black bag was last seen in LA Grammy weekend,” Earthgang wrote on Twitter. “In it was our drives with our latest music. RT!! If anybody has seen it pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeee DM us.” They then shared a clearer photo of the bag and added, “A better close up pick of it. Pleeeeeeeease DM us if you’ve seen it!!”

A Twitter user asked if the post was “a joke or a quest” and Earthgang replied, “No quest it’s deadass either lost or was stolen.”

The duo has yet to offer an update about the hard drives, so they are presumably still missing.

It’s a hard time for artists. Late last year, alternative pop star Lana Del Rey had her backpack stolen, which also had hard drives with music. “So I want to talk to you guys about something for a minute,” she said in a video. “A few months ago, I parked my car on Melrose Place and I stepped away for a minute and the one time I left my backpack inside my car someone broke all of the windows and took it. Inside of it was my computer and my three camcorders and my hard drives. I had to remotely wipe the computer that had my 200-page book for Simon & Schuster which I didn’t have backed up on the Cloud because we do not have any Cloud systems that we access.”

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The ‘Fast X’ Trailer With Vin Diesel Vs. Jason Momoa Is As Ridiculous (And Wonderful) As You Hoped

From humble beginnings (Vin Diesel stealing DVD players) come great things (Vin Diesel behind the wheel of a car that gets dropped out of an airplane and smashes two helicopters to save his son who’s been kidnapped by Jason Momoa).

The Fast and Furious franchise started in 2001. Over the next 20-plus years, the franchise has killed off main characters, brought said characters back, gone to Tokyo, heisted a vault, staged an elaborate set piece where a car jumped from one skyscraper to another skyscraper, gave Charlize Theron dreadlocks, excommunicated one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and gone to space. Also, this happened.

What will Fast X have in store? Based on the trailer above, there will be more gravity-defying stunts, obviously, as well as flashbacks to the best film in the series, Dom saying things like “today I race to stop the bloodbath” with the conviction of a Shakespearean actor, and Letty and Cipher in a lab. Please please please let it be a a face/off machine. It’s the only thing this silly (he says with affection) franchise is missing.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

Over many missions and against impossible odds, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family have outsmarted, out-nerved and outdriven every foe in their path. Now, they confront the most lethal opponent they’ve ever faced: A terrifying threat emerging from the shadows of the past who’s fueled by blood revenge, and who is determined to shatter this family and destroy everything — and everyone — that Dom loves, forever.

Fast X, which stars Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, John Cena, Jason Momoa, Jordana Brewster, Brie Larson, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, Scott Eastwood, Michael Rooker, Daniela Melchior, Alan Ritchson, Helen Mirren, Cardi B, Rita Moreno, and Charlize Theron, opens on May 23.

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Fox News’ Julie Banderas Announced That She’s Getting A Divorce On ‘Gutfeld,’ And She’s Not Kidding: ‘F*ck Valentine’s Day’

A Valentine’s Day discussion on Gutfeld took a turn when Fox News anchor Julie Banderas revealed that she’s getting a divorce after 13 years of marriage. A feisty Banderas had no time for the romantic holiday, which she blasted along with her soon to be ex-husband, who apparently routinely failed the cardinal rule: Always get your wife a gift, or at the very least a card. C’mon, man.

“F*ck Valentine’s Day,” Banderas boldly announced during Thursday’s night episode of Gutfeld. “It is stupid. I mean, even when I was married, I didn’t get sh*t.”

Via HuffPost:

“Well, I am going to get a divorce. I am going to go ahead and say it here for the first time,” said Banderas, announcing her split from Andrew Sansone, her husband of 13 years. “Thank you, everyone. Congratulations are in order,” she added after receiving some audience applause. “That was breaking news.”

Banderas then declared Valentine’s Day a “Hallmark holiday,” “stupid” and “absolutely ridiculous.”

As Banderas went viral thanks to the clip of her blowing up the Gutfeld episode with her anti-Valentine’s Day rant, some users questioned whether the whole thing was a joke. Banderas, who was apparently monitoring the online chatter well into the night made it very clear that she’s getting the heck out of her marriage.

“I wasn’t kidding,” Banderas responded to a Twitter user who predicted that Banderas would announce she’s “kidding” and everyone’s going to fell “disappointed” falling for the alleged bit. It sounds like she means business, buddy, and let that be a lesson, fellas. Always get a card or flowers. It’s not that hard.

(Via HuffPost)

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Salma Hayek Pinault Was ‘Sore’ After Her ‘Magic Mike’ Lap Dance With Channing Tatum

Salma Hayek Pinault survived Magic Mike and all she got was Channing Tatum not wearing a lousy t-shirt. The most talked-about scene in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike’s Last Dance is a lengthy lap dance involving Magical Michael, played by Tatum, and Hayek Pinault’s character, Maxandra. “Every single person that’s seen the movie talks first and mostly about that scene, which it’s a surprise for me. But I’m glad because it works for the story of the movie,” she told People.

Hayek Pinault was sore after the first rehearsal for the lap dance “because I’m not in shape and it’s not movement you’re used to,” she said. “It was technical: You’ve got to make sure you don’t poke his eye with a stiletto or knock him out or he doesn’t drop me. He kept telling me he was ‘very strong, don’t worry,’ but still you’ve got to hold on a little bit with the arms or the legs.” Hayek Pinault also discussed working with C-Tates.

“You cannot fabricate chemistry. You can hate somebody and have chemistry onscreen, and there’s people that fall in love in movies and the movies don’t work because there’s no chemistry,” the Oscar nominee says. “We were just the right mix, I think, for this. It’s kind of like the camera decides that, and we just got lucky. But you know what? We get along great.”

Tatum gets along with most everyone: Hayek Pinault, Zoe Kravitz, other ripped dudes, this dog, etc.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance is in theaters now.

(Via People)

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The Action-Packed ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ Super Bowl Spot Is Fueled By CGI And Hugh Grant Getting Walloped By Water

This weekend’s Super Bowl broadcast will be chock full of commercials and trailers aplenty. So, there’s plenty for non-sports fans to enjoy, and that might include Dungeons & Dragons fans who have gotten their RPG on like Joe Manganiello in a tricked-out basement. Previously, Paramount gave a look at a full trailer with a smoldering Regé-Jean Page, who is using his post-Bridgerton days to advantage with abs of armor.

Page is accompanied by a cast full of butt-kicking greats, including Michelle Rodriguez (also representing in the Fast X trailer) and Chris Pine. There’s more CGI than one can possibly absorb in a rational manner, but it doesn’t look janky like much does these days. Oh, and Hugh Grant will be putting on his coveted villain hat (not of the Paddington variety but Forge Fletcher) again, and it’s rather astounding to behold him amid all of this action. Daniel Cleaver could never, and suck it, Mark Darcy. From the synopsis:

A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings the rich world and playful spirit of the legendary roleplaying game to the big screen in a hilarious and action-packed adventure.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves arrives in March 2023.

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Rihanna Comforted Patrick Mahomes After Brandon Marshall’s Prank Involving Her: ‘I Still Think You’re Great’

Rihanna revealed a lot in her Apple Music interview about the Super Bowl Halftime Show yesterday, February 9. She talked about the struggles of having to cram an electrifying performance into just 13 minutes, which made her change the setlist a whopping 39 times.

The “Umbrella” singer also caught up with football player Brandon Marshall that same day at a press event. He was feeling like a prankster, though; earlier that week, he asked Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, “Rihanna came out and said that you are the greatest quarterback ever. Hearing that, how does that make you feel?”

“It makes you feel great,” Mahomes answered. “Whatever Rihanna says is like the gospels. So I’m glad that she went with me for that honor.”

“She didn’t. I was messing with you,” Marshall revealed.

When Marshall informed her of this, Rihanna comforted Mahomes by offering apologies, “I’m so sorry you went through that,” she said. “I still think you’re great.” Upon learning about the lie, she said, “That’s so mean. He is mean, OK.”

In her Apple Music interview yesterday, Rihanna also discussed new material. “Musically, I’m feeling open. I’m feeling open to exploring, discovering, creating things that are new. Things that are different. Things that are off, weird, might not ever make sense to my fans [or] the people that know the music that I put out. I just wanna play. I wanna have fun. I want to have to fun with music.”

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Jennifer Lopez Didn’t Miss An Opportunity To Bring Up Ben’s Grumpy Grammys Face When The Time Was Right

Jennifer Lopez returned to the scene of the (expression) crime several days after Ben Affleck’s Grammys Grump Face. That’s quite a sentence that would still make sense to anyone who’s heard about (or even watched) Ben’s “miserable” appearance during one of music’s biggest nights of the year. One of the most recent entries in this saga is that JLo apparently showed Ben the live memes of his face, which only made him look more exasperated. This adds to his general Sad Batman vibe that has proliferated every time the paparazzi catch him looking pained during his Dunkin’ coffee runs that actually bring him much joy.

Despite appearances of a tense exchange during the show, JLo has shone light on the claim that Ben was simply exhausted as a homebody and someone who’s been working his butt off lately. To that end, she took to Instagram to post the trailer for Air, the movie directed by Ben and in which he plays Nike co-founder Philip Knight, who really wants to sign Michael Jordan.

Jo’s inner-trailer caption: “my husband’s happy face.” “AIR … cannot wait! she also wrote.

That sense of humor no doubt does both JLo and Ben well, which shouldn’t be any surprising, considering that they’ve overcome Gigli.

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Drake Made His Super Bowl Pick By Placing Nearly $1 Million In Bets On One Of The Teams

We are now just days away from Super Bowl LVII, the biggest game of the NFL season that’s going down this weekend on February 12. The Kansas City Chiefs are taking on the Philadelphia Eagles for the league championship, and Drake (a frequent high-stakes gambler) has picked who he thinks is going to win… or at least which team he has put nearly $1 million in bets on.

On Instagram yesterday (February 9), Drake showed off a series of bets he made on the big game, including putting $700,000 on the Chiefs to win. HE also bet on Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster to score touchdowns, and for Travis Kelce to win the game’s MVP award. In total, he placed $960,000 in bets.

Drake wrote alongside his post, “My psychotic bets for Sunday are in @stake [fingers crossed emoji] [smiling devil emoji] pls do not analyze the logic behind these bets there is none [face blowing smoke emoji].”

Believe it or not, this is actually lighter than Drake went on bets for last year’s Super Bowl: For the 2022 game, he placed $1.26 million million in wagers.

Meanwhile, he recently bet on Argentina to win the World Cup, and while they did win, Drake actually lost his bet thanks to some fine print.

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Ask A Music Critic: Why Aren’t There More Negative Album Reviews?

Welcome to another installment of Ask A Music Critic! And thanks to everyone who has sent me questions. Please keep them coming at [email protected].

Like a lot of people this week I read Pitchfork’s extremely negative review of the Måneskin album. I also read your review, which was also negative though you were relatively kind compared to Pitchfork! I thought the review was funny and well-written, but it mostly made think about how rare it is to read an extremely negative review these days. Maybe Måneskin is just an easy target, though there are other albums that I think also warrant that sort of treatment. What’s going on here? Why aren’t there more negative album reviews? Don’t tell me that music is better than ever! — Phil from Los Angeles

I get this question a lot from readers. There clearly is hunger out there for more haterism! Though I suspect that what people really want is for that haterism to be directed at music they also hate. When haterism is applied indiscriminately and music you personally love catches a stray, that’s a different story. That is a crime punishable by tweet storms and angry emails. But when it’s a goofy rock band from Italy that acts like an ankle-humping poodle in heat, the hate suddenly seems hilarious and invigorating. This is the kind of hate the people demand.

First of all, let me assure you that you are not imagining a dearth of negativity. Head to Metacritic and it’s almost impossible to find universally dismissed records. Which is strange because, like you said, it’s not as if music in the modern era is better than it used to be. There are plenty of artists who make music that I think is bad, and that you might think is bad, but that doesn’t seem to be reflected in what critics are writing.

When people ask me about the lack of smack talk in music criticism, they almost always immediately offer their own answers. Here are the most common theories:

1. It’s about access
Music publications don’t run negative reviews because PR people will blackball them and prevent the artists they work for from granting interviews in the future.

2. It’s about fanbases
Music publications don’t run negative reviews because psychotic online fanatics will make the lives of their writers miserable.

3. It’s about poptimism
Music publications don’t run negative reviews because writers have been brainwashed by an “everything is good and relevant” critical ideology.

I have listed these theories in descending order of credibility. No. 1 is kind of true (but only for certain publications, and in far fewer instances than is assumed). No. 2 is barely true (especially since psychotic online fanatics will even protest positive reviews for not being positive enough). And no. 3 isn’t true at all (particularly when it comes to butt-rock bands like Måneskin, who have been the lowest hanging fruit for music writers since Grand Funk Railroad).

What I never hear mentioned is the simplest and most logical explanation, which (in my view) is also the truest — it’s about the decline of the general-interest music critic.

Thirty years ago, music criticism was predominantly a local business. In every town with a daily newspaper or an alt-weekly, there was a person who covered concerts, interviewed musicians passing through town, and reviewed albums. And because this person was the only writer on staff who covered music, they wrote about everything. (Freelancers pitched in, but that was only in bigger markets and usually when the on-staff critic was on vacation.)

Now, this person was required by profession to have a broad musical taste. But a human being’s musical taste can only be so eclectic. Blind spots were inevitable. The critic might enjoy mainstream rock but have no feel for country. They might have extensive knowledge of R&B history but grow cold at the sound of hip-hop. But no matter the blind spots, this writer still had to cover music they didn’t really understand or know much about. And that was the music they were more likely to go negative on.

Take Robert Christgau, whose “local” perch at The Village Voice in New York City made him one of the most-read and important general-interest music critics of the late 20th century. Christgau is one of the most prolific music writers of all time, and he’s covered as wide a range of artists as anybody ever. The man’s knowledge is second to none. But even Robert Christgau had blind spots, and one of the biggest was metal and hard rock. In the 1980s, he did not like AC/DC’s Back In Black, he scoffed at Metallica’s Master Of Puppets, and he pretty much loathed everything Guns N’ Roses committed to tape.

Now, it was his prerogative to hate on those bands, and his loyal readers no doubt appreciated Christgau’s insights and one-liners at his subjects’ expense. But for listeners who love metal and hard rock — or any marginalized genre that existed outside the expertise of the era’s general-interest critics — reading about how Appetite For Destruction only deserved a “B-minus” was understandably maddening. Because on some level, even with all of his knowledge, he didn’t in this instance really get what he was writing about, at least in terms of the audience for that particular music. He couldn’t grasp what a “good” metal album was, because all metal was bad to him.

To write a real pan, you need a bad album, of course. But pure, uncut haterism also requires a certain distance from the topic. You must be cut off in some essential way from what you’re writing about. Effective haterism is typically directed outside the normal purview of who you’re writing for. (It’s why describing Metallica as “male chauvinists too inexperienced to know better” was funnier to Village Voice readers who didn’t listen to Metallica than the heshers who bought Master Of Puppets.) If you feel empathy for the artist’s perspective, the hate will instantly drain from your body. The insult-comic part of your brain will shut off. You can still write criticism, but it will be measured and more thoughtful. (As well as less mean and probably less hilarious.)

Once the internet became the hub for conversations about music, it was no longer necessary to read opinions from non-experts. And that changed music criticism forever. In the current landscape, it’s more likely that an album will be reviewed by a person who is intimately familiar with the type of music under discussion. (Or, at the very least, the writer will be an appreciator.) That doesn’t mean the writer will automatically like the record, but it does mean that the “outsider” viewpoint that makes bombastic haterism possible won’t come into play. An example is Pitchfork’s review of the recent Lil Yachty record, Let’s Start Here, which leans negative but doesn’t register as a comical takedown like the Måneskin review.

Complaints about music critics going soft typically pertain to coverage of pop stars. But I think this shift from general interest to expertise has had a more profound influence on how genres like metal, hip-hop, and country are covered. (This also applies to any “new” genre that young people love and old people can’t stand, like hyperpop.) And that is a good thing! Except for the unintended side effect that music criticism, perhaps, is a bit too nice now.

Instead of covering everything, music critics now are inclined to write only about genres they already like. I have mixed feelings about this. Expertise is a virtue, no question, but when everyone “stays in their lane,” you lose that wild hater energy that keeps the discourse interesting. I doubt, for instance, that Steve Albini actually knows anything about Steely Dan, but it’s fun to see him get so worked up about despising them.

Like I said, people love bombastic dismissals from critics until they start coming for music that they like. So, I guess I’ll turn the question around: How many negative reviews do you want? Are delicious pans worth the occasional gratuitous cheap shot? If you laugh at something you can’t stand being taken down a peg, will you shrug off the hatchet job on something you adore? As for me, I see it as my job to call out artists who I think have committed artistic sins. But I try to be judicious with my haterism. Vitriol is a precious resource. Spend it wisely.

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Vin Diesel Knows The Oscar Nominee (And MCU Co-Star) He Wants To Add To The ‘Fast And Furious’ Family

Even without The Rock, Vin Diesel’s Fast and Furious family is huge. Fast X adds Jason Momoa, Brie Larson, and Rita Moreno to an ensemble cast that includes Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, John Cena, Jordana Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, Scott Eastwood, Michael Rooker, Daniela Melchior, Alan Ritchson, Helen Mirren, Cardi B, Rita Moreno, and Charlize Theron.

Yes, Oscar winner and three-time nominee Charlize Theron is the “and.” Pretty good!

Diesel isn’t done adding Academy Award-nominated performers to the franchise, however. He told Variety at the premiere of the Fast X trailer that his dream casting for Fast to the 11th Power, or whatever, is his ex-Marvel Cinematic Universe co-star Robert Downey Jr. Diesel even has a character in mind.

“Without telling you too much about what happens in the future, there’s a character who is the antithesis of Dom who is promoting AI and driverless cars and a philosophy that with that goes your freedom,” he said. “There is somebody that believes that’s the future, and that’s at direct odds with the Toretto mentality.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: never go at direct odds with the Toretto mentality.

The Fast X trailer drops later today, while the movie comes out on May 19.

(Via Variety)