Gamers are never shy about voicing their gripes with what they play, something that is especially true with NBA 2K. While things like microtransactions or gameplay oftentimes draw the ire of those who play the game, the latest ruffled feathers came with a series of unskippable ads that appear in NBA 2K21‘s load screen before 2K TV starts up that presented a hurdle for those who wanted to set lineups and do other pregame adjustments.
The whole thing made those who play the game pretty bummed, especially because 2K is a game that has been defined by finding ways to get a little more money out of those who already drop serious coin to pick up a copy — the current-generation version of this year’s game, for instance, retailed for $59.99, while the next-generation version will start at $10 more. But in a statement released by NBA 2K on Tuesday afternoon, the company announced that while “ads have been integrated into 2KTV segments” in recent years, these in particular “are not meant to run as part of the pre-game introduction.” And as a result of the response from those who play the game, this will be remedied soon.
Several big-name stars served up some of the best new pop music this week. Justin Bieber teamed up with Benny Blanco for a reflective single, Lana Del Rey offered a preview of her next album, and Demi Lovato questioned the president’s actions in a politically-charged track.
From Chance The Rapper to Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber has been staying busy with collaborations following the release of his comeback record Changes. Now, Bieber is getting introspective about his life in the limelight on honest track “Lonely.” Throughout the single, Bieber details growing up in the media but still feeling like no one knows the real him.
Lana Del Rey — “Let Me Love You Like A Woman”
With “Let Me Love You Like A Woman,” Lana Del Rey offered her first solo single of the year. The lovelorn piano ballad previews the singer’s upcoming anticipated record Chemtrails Over The Country Club and follows the release of her poetry book Violet Bend Backward Over The Grass.
Demi Lovato — “Commander In Chief”
Demi Lovato used her voice to encourage her fans to vote with the moving single “Commander In Chief.” Speaking about the track in a statement, Lovato said: “It’s very important for me that I get to use my platform for something much bigger than just singing. There’s been so many times where I wanted to write the president a letter or sit down with him and ask him these questions. And then I thought, I don’t really actually want to do that, and I think one way that I could do that is writing a song and releasing it for the whole world to hear, and then he has to answer those questions to everybody and not just me.”
Conan Gray x Lauv — “Fake”
Two breakout pop stars, Conan Gray and Lauv, teamed up for the buoyant collaboration “Fake” this week. “We wrote ‘Fake’ the first time I met Conan and it’s one of my fav songs ever,” Lauv said. Gray added: “Lauv and I wrote ‘Fake’ while we were just hanging and ranting about those two faced people everybody knows. Those people who say one thing and do the other, people who constantly talk trash about their own friends. We wanted to make something fun you can scream in the car to, a song to flip a bird at those types of people.”
Major Lazer — “QueLoQue” Feat. Paloma Mami
This week, Major Lazer offered another taste for their upcoming record Music Is The Weapon with the hip-shaking tune “QueLoQue.” In a statement about the track, collaborator Paloma Mami expressed what made them love the track: “‘QueLoQue’ has been in the works for a while now and I’m so happy to finally be able to share it with you all! It has a fire energy to it with some elements of old school reggaeton and mixing it with that electronic touch from Major Lazer.”
Claud — “Gold”
Claud has gained a cult following through a handful of singles and EPs and now, the singer is the latest signee of Phoebe Bridgers’ newly-minted label Saddest Factory. Sharing a new single this week, Claud said: “‘Gold’ is about contradictions; an instructor attempting to teach a class of monsters proper manners so they can assimilate; a relationship getting so tired and so old that even gold starts to rust (which isn’t scientifically possible).”
James Blake — “Before”
This week, James Blake gave only one day’s notice before sharing his four-track EP, Before. The effort’s title track sets the stage for the remainder of the project, starting slow before deconstructing into a thumping beat.
Omar Apollo — “Hey Boy” Feat. Kali Uchis
Omar Apollo released his highly-anticipated record Apolonio this week and with it came the soothing Kali Uchis collaboration “Hey Boy.” The song is the shortest on the entire record, clocking in at just under two minutes, but it’s soothing tones make up for the abbreviated length as watery guitar tones simmer underneath Apollo and Uchis’ harmonies.
Dorian Electra — “My Agenda” Feat. Village People and Pussy Riot
Hyperpop producer Dorian Electra released their intoxicating record My Agenda this week and its title track boasted collaborations from renowned artists. Speaking to how the collaborators exist in heteronormative spaces, Electra said Village People “have infiltrated straight mainstream society with some of the gayest music in history. You’ve got people at football games, bar mitzvahs, hetero-ass weddings doing this ‘YMCA.’”
Tayla Parx — “Residue”
Tayla Parx is gearing up for the release of her album Coping Mechanisms in November and offered up another preview with the infectious single “Reside.” “It’s about one of those moments when you try to get somebody off your brain or heart,” Parx said in a statement. “You’re confessing, ‘I’m trying to get rid of you,’ which is another one of my unhealthy coping mechanisms. In certain cases, you’re being avoidant and acting like it was never there versus finding solutions to the problem head-on.”
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Back in September, Shawn Mendes teased something big. A few weeks later, the singer followed-up with a couple of exciting announcements. Not only was Mendes ushering in a new era of music, but he had also been working with Netflix on a documentary. Mendes’ In Wonder documentary trailer was released Tuesday and it offers a glimpse of the singer speaking to his career and inspirations.
Mendes’ In Wonder documentary followed his extensive 2019 tour which boasted over 100 different shows. Throughout the preview, Mendes speaks to his struggles as a touring musician, as well as offers insight into his headspace on stage:
“You first get on the stage and ego comes rushing in. And it goes, ‘Don’t mess up.’ And then about 30 seconds in you go, ‘Oh yeah, I’m just a guy who loves music. Time to surrender.’ […] We’re on an 104-show tour and it’s pretty intense all the time. But this isn’t the story of a famous musician. This is a story about a guy growing up. I used to be like, ‘My idols were born legendary.’ But that’s just not the truth. If I tell the world I’m just a normal human, are they going to stop coming to the shows? Maybe I should pretend that I’m Superman for just a little longer.”
From the looks of it, the documentary will also touch on the budding relationship between Mendes and Camila Cabello. The two first met in 2014 when they were both just starting on their music career, but made things official in 2019 after they collaborated on the hit track “Señorita.”
Watch Mendes’ official In Wonder trailer above.
In Wonder premieres 11/23 on Netflix. Watch it here.
I am, generally speaking, not a fan of celebrities interviewing each other. Zendaya isn’t going to ask Tom Cruise hard-hitting questions about his personal life; they’re going to chat about process, and craft services, and vacationing in Italy, and other famous people stuff. It’s usually boring. I will, however, make an exception for Marilyn Manson interviewing Nicolas Cage. They’re fascinating oddballs who, if given the chance, will discuss talking crows, snakeskin jackets, mummy’s hands, and Werner Herzog.
Do yourself a favor and read Manson’s conversation with Cage in Interview magazine (the headline begins “C*ck!”), if only for the section where the National Treasure star discusses the last time he gambled. “The last time I gambled was about 30 years ago. I was in the Bahamas, and I walked into a casino and felt like I had my mojo with me, like nothing could go wrong,” he said. Cage wasn’t wrong: within 20 minutes of playing roulette, he turned $200 into $20,000, so he “went and found an orphanage in the Bahamas, met all the kids and the headmistress, and said, ‘This is for you.’ I put the 20 grand in her hand, walked away, and never gambled again, because if I did, it would ruin the power of that moment.”
Did this actually happen? Did Nicolas Cage donate $20,000 to an orphanage in the Bahamas, where he would later buy a private island? Put it this way. My man once said, “What is an octopus, $80? You’re not going to go into dire straits buying an octopus. The dinosaur skull was an unfortunate thing, because I did spend $276,000 on that.”
Nilüfer Yanya made a splash with her 2019 debut album Miss Universe, and now she’s ready to follow it up. Today, the singer-songwriter announced a new EP, Feeling Lucky?, and shared a video for the first track from it, “Crash.”
The simple clip for the rocking tune has Yanya performing the song as a flight attendant. Yanya said of the song and video:
“The video for ‘Crash’ takes place on a flight. Last year, doing a lot of touring I found myself becoming more and more anxious each time I boarded a plane, something which was new for me as I’ve never had a fear of flying. With each flight we took, it felt like the turbulence was getting worse and I was convinced my luck was due to run out. I didn’t write ‘Crash’ about being on an aeroplane but I really like it visually as an embodiment of the song.”
She also said of the EP as a whole, “One of the songs had the theme of luck in it as a concept, but then I realized they all do. That got me thinking about luck in general; good and bad. Things out of our control and things in control of us, how often we put acts and happenings down to the fortune of good luck or bad luck when things exceed our expectations or don’t go according to plan.”
Watch the “Crash” video above and find the Feeling Lucky? art and tracklist below.
ATO
1. “Crash”
2. “Same Damn Luck”
3. “Day 7.5093”
Feeling Lucky? is out 12/11 via ATO. Pre-order it here.
While Among Us was first released back in 2018, it has become quite popular in recent months during the COVID-19 pandemic. The game, a delightful murder mystery saga that takes place in a spaceship with up to 10 players, has given folks who are spending more time than usual at home a chance to enjoy some time with one another virtually.
Part of its recent popularity can be attributed to how streamers have taken to the game, oftentimes hopping onto Twitch with friends and making events out of getting a group of people together, even as they’re all dispersed around the globe. Apparently, this has caught the attention of New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and on Tuesday, she decided she wanted to get in on all the fun.
Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote? (I’ve never played but it looks like a lot of fun)
In the aftermath, a number of individuals — streamers, fellow politicians, retired Major League outfielder Hunter Pence — used social media to make it clear they’d like to get in on a game with the first-term representative from The Bronx.
The outpouring of interest apparently got the job done because Ocasio-Cortez — who was already in the process of making a Twitch account — apparently started making preparations to get in on the Among Us craze.
There’s no word on whether Ocasio-Cortez’s stream will only be used for Among Us, or if we’d get ventures into things like Jackbox or Fortnite. Regardless, we’ll have to wait and see if streaming on Twitch becomes a widespread thing among elected officials, because if it does, it stands to reason that particularly contentious games of 2K between members of the Senate will inevitably get brought up during debates on the floor of the Capitol.
Matthew McConaughey’s endless summer of the aughts was the stuff of legends. In between shirtless runs on the beach, he squeezed in a perpetual stream of romcoms, or perhaps it was the other way around. Even though he’s been crushing it as a dramatic actor for several years (Including Dallas Buyers Club, True Detective, and so on), his romcoms will never fade away, even if they faded into each other. In his new memoir, Greenlights, McConaughey details why he did so many fluff movies, and why he had to quit them.
It all started so innocently. McConaughey wrote (via Us Weekly) that these films were his “only consistent box-office hits,” which is why he kept finding them tossed his way. How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, Failure To Launch, Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past, Fool’s Gold — the box-office hits kept coming, and as McConaughey explained things, he was happy with obliging for awhile.
“The romantic comedies remained my only consistent box office hits, which made them my only consistent incoming offers,” the Wolf of Wall Street actor wrote. “For me personally, I enjoyed being able to give people a nitty-minute breezy romantic getaway from the stress of their lives where they didn’t have to think about anything, just watch the boy chase the girl, fall down, then get up and finally get her. I had taken the baton from Hugh Grant, and I ran with it.”
There’s nothing wrong with some frivolity, but eventually, things grew monotonous, even though, as McConaughey continued, “I enjoyed making romantic comedies, and their paychecks rented the houses on the beach I ran shirtless on.” So, he eventually had to shut down the fun, and after a $14.5 million offer arrived in 2010, McConaughey realized that he’d gone too far. “If I couldn’t do what I wanted,” he concluded. “I wasn’t going to do what I didn’t, no matter the price.” And as the rest of the story goes, McConaughey’s been alright, alright, alright ever since.
Shortly after Tom Petty’s death in 2017, the beloved musician’s estate organized the Tom Petty Birthday Bash festival in his hometown of Gainesville, FL. The event was so successful that Petty’s estate decided to make the festival an annual occurrence. This year, due to the impossibility of live music events, Tom Petty’s 70th Birthday Bash will go virtual and invite popular artists like Post Malone and Stevie Nicks to offer tribute performances to the singer.
Along with Malone and Nicks, other big-name artists slated to perform on October 23 include Brandi Carlile, The Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, Gary Clark Jr., Margo Price, Spoon, Lenny Kravitz, Eddie Vedder, Rick Ruben, and many more. Taking place over the span of five hours, the Birthday Bash will also feature heartfelt testimonials from some of Petty’s musician friends and fans.
TOM PETTY
On top of paying tribute to the iconic singer, the Birthday Bash festival will raise awareness for the National Independent Venue Associations’ Save Our Stages bill, which would secure relief funding for venues across the country. The event will similarly focus on the organizations Arts In Medicine, which benefits the Gainesville community and beyond, Digitunity, an initiative working to ensure everyone has the technology they need, and MusiCares, the Recording Academy’s charitable fund that offers donations to struggling musicians.
The virtual festival kicks of 10/23 at 7 p.m. ET. Tune in here and check out the full lineup above.
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Tom DeLonge is the musician most associated with curiosity about UFOs and extraterrestrial life, but he’s not the only one. In a recent interview, Miley Cyrus claims that she and a friend saw a UFO and an unidentified being operating it.
Speaking with fashion designer Rick Owens for Interview, Cyrus told the story:
“I had an experience, actually. I was driving through San Bernardino with my friend, and I got chased down by some sort of UFO. I’m pretty sure about what I saw, but I’d also bought weed wax from a guy in a van in front of a taco shop, so it could have been the weed wax. But the best way to describe it is a flying snowplow. It had this big plow in the front of it and was glowing yellow. I did see it flying, and my friend saw it, too. There were a couple of other cars on the road and they also stopped to look, so I think what I saw was real. […] I was shaken for, like, five days. It f*cked me up. […] I couldn’t really look at the sky the same. I thought they might come back.”
Owens than asked if she felt threatened by the situation, and she responded, “I didn’t feel threatened at all, actually, but I did see a being sitting in the front of the flying object. It looked at me and we made eye contact, and I think that’s what really shook me, looking into the eyes of something that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. But you’re so right to say that it’s a form of narcissism to think that we’re the only things that could be in this vast universe.”
As far as the internet concerned (and with all due respect to Messina), Hollywood is dominated by the Chrises: Pine, Evans, Hemsworth, and Pratt. Why that order? Because that’s how I would personally rank them, and while everyone is entitled to their hunky opinion, it appears that the consensus “worst Chris” is Pratt. On Saturday, filmmaker Amy Berg tweeted, “One has to go,” along with photos of the four Chrises. “Respondents overwhelmingly voted out Parks and Recreation actor Pratt, citing him reportedly being a President Trump supporter and — in a claim that Pratt, 41, has denied — last year supporting a church that maintains anti-LGBTQ beliefs,” according to the New York Post. Berg did the same tweet structure later that day, except this time, she replaced Pratt with O’Dowd, adding, “I feel like this is harder.” Ouch. Poor Andy.
Pratt’s wife, author Katherine Schwarzenegger, has come to his defense on Instagram after E! News posted about the debate (beats talking about the other debate). “Is this really what we need? There’s so much going on in the world and people are struggling in so many ways. Being mean is so yesterday,” she wrote. “There’s enough room to love all these guys. Love is what we all need not meanness and bullying. Let’s try that.”
For what it’s worth, it’s unclear if Pratt is a Trump supporter, but we know for sure that Schwarzenegger (and the Jurassic World star’s terminator-in-law) isn’t. She urged her social media followers to vote for Joe Biden. “If that tweet itself is not enough to get you fired up to want to elect Biden and get rid of Trump as president of our country, then I don’t know what is. That’s the sickest tweet I’ve ever seen. Please vote,” she wrote.
“Please vote” is something we can all agree on. That, and the Chris club should have five members: Pine, Evans, Hemsworth, Pratt, and Kattan.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
pic.twitter.com/rvMC9z0Wft
Josh Scaryar 
(@JShahryar)