Category: Viral

As the global pandemic causes millions to become suddenly unemployed, many musicians have offered financial assistance to fans. Taylor Swift recently covered rent for a fan who lost their job due to the virus. Lil Nas X and Megan Thee Stallion offered to pay some of their fans’ bills. Now, Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny is the latest musician to offer financial assistance to one of his supporters, albeit in a different way.

Cynthia Coronado, a devoted fan of Bad Bunny, recreated one of the singer’s Instagram photos on a giant canvas. The detailed painting shows Bad Bunny sporting heart-shaped glasses while sunbathing. Coronado shared the painting on Twitter and tagged Bad Bunny in hopes he would see it: “hope y’all like and hopefully he gets to see it!” she wrote.

Not only did the painting catch Bad Bunny’s attention, but he loved the portrait so much that he offered to purchase it for an impressive sum of money. “yo lo quiero,” he wrote. The singer then said he would pay $5,000 to keep the painting.

While most people would have accepted the hefty sum of money, Coronado was satisfied enough that he enjoyed her work. The painter turned down the money and instead said his love of the artwork was “worth more than money.”

After her tweet blew up, Coronado thanked Bad Bunny’s fans for their attention and said she’s working on creating prints of the artwork.

Check out Bad Bunny’s Twitter exchange with the fan above.

When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, UPROXX’s People’s Party With Talib Kweli found itself in stable shape. We had episodes banked that would last us a few months, including this week’s episode, featuring comedian Gina Yashere. But that didn’t mean the show’s star was going to slow down. Kweli is a notoriously restless soul — if he’s not traveling for shows, he’s writing, producing, or promoting. Quarantined in an Orange County hotel, he started going on Instagram Live, playing DJ sets for his 855K followers.

This week, Kweli’s thirst to be at once productive and creative means the release of a video for his song “People’s Party” (the theme music for the show) featuring Sorry To Bother You director and The Coup frontman Boots Riley. Quarantined in separate cities, Boots and Kweli shot their verses of the video on their iPhones and then spliced them together. Still, the personality of both rappers is on full display and the video itself is a time capsule of this strange era.

I spoke to both artists (separately) this week about making the video, the desire to create during the quarantine, and how the shutdown has affected the art they’re excited to make.

How did this project come about? What was the genesis point for this?

Boots Riley: I was visiting New York in 2015 and I needed a place to stay for the night — I was really broke, trying to get the movie done. And I had $50 to be in New York for a week, so that meant a hot dog. I was spending each day in Lincoln Center, meeting all these studios and production companies, then sleeping on people’s couches at night. So Talib was like, “Well, why are you in New York? Come to the studio.” And I was just thinking, “Okay, well that fills up a night where I don’t have to sleep on somebody’s couch.”

Talib Kweli: Boots is someone who I’ve known for a long time. I went to South Africa with him in 2001. I’ve been a fan of The Coup and a fan of Boots almost since I started listening to hip-hop. I mean they had cool videos on the Video Music Box and MTV around the time that I first figured out what good hip-hop was. Boots Riley is part of my journey.

I have a modest space in Brooklyn — it’s not fancy at all — where I run my company, Javoti, out of and Boots stayed over there. He didn’t sleep, but he spent the night working on this song and it was dope to me because this is my brother. It’s not like we hang out all the time. And we had another song together, “My Favorite Mutiny,” on The Coup’s Pick A Bigger Weapon album. But to see him sit there in the studio and work on this track — he really took his time and I’m very impressed with his verse.

Obviously, it took some time for the track to be released — which happens sometimes. With the People’s Party podcast blowing up and the quarantine leaving everybody longing to connect because of the quarantine, was this sort of the perfect moment?

Riley: Yeah, it’s been one of those songs that’s been around. It’s been like, “Oh, is it going to come out or what? What’s happening?” Then Kweli sent it to me and said, “Hey, we’re going to do a video for it.” So, I had to listen and had to relearn the part to do the video.

Kweli: I mean, I didn’t know that the show and the song would come together like that at all. But that’s just how things happen, I suppose. That’s the part that they call a mystery, but if you really think about it it’s not really a mystery. Even with the way that we released video — we had all these grandiose conversations about what the video was going to look like and we were going to get ADs and scout locations. We had a lot of conversations, but then the quarantine came and it was like, “Let’s just shoot on our iPhones.”

Boots, did you know that we’d been using it as the intro song for People’s Party?

Riley: No, actually. As a matter of fact, he mentioned it before we did the video — before I sent him my performance. But yeah, no, I didn’t know. I’ve been so locked in a cage, writing my next projects, that I haven’t really been catching much of anything. I knew he had the podcast and we really tried to connect a few times when I was in LA, but the timing just never matched up.

Kweli: I asked Boots to do a video with me last year, when we first started the podcast, and we just never got together to do it or our schedules didn’t line up. Then, a few weeks ago, I was sitting at the hotel and I was like, “Shit, maybe Boots is free to do a video now.”

And you literally just shot him a text?

Kweli: Yeah. And then he set the tone from there. I said, “Listen, I want to do a video. Everyone is quarantined so you shoot your part on your phone and I’ll shoot my part on my phone. I’ll send it to my editor Chino Chase and we’ll see when it comes out of it.”

So you shot it on your phones, during the quarantine —

Riley: It’s a true quarantine video, shot on my phone while I’m at my home. A selfie quarantine video. I like performing. I like putting on a show, so it’s all going to come out — even in a unique situation like this.

Kweli: I shot mine with the iPhone at the hotel that I was staying at. But people have been using the iPhone in creative ways for music videos for a long, long time. We’re hardly the first to do that. When I was working heavy with Jean Grae she was very… I feel like Jean Grae has done a whole TV shows on her iPhone.

What do you think it is that’s bringing people to want to create under these circumstances? Is it boredom or is it the desire — the innate human desire — to tell stories, especially in tough times?

Riley: I think — especially for folks who are already leaning towards creating things — that right now is a time when you have fewer distractions. There are less things that you can do; less things that you can handle. So I think it lets people just kind of get in this pure maybe… more pure creative place.

So for instance, I would normally have to go take my kids and drop them off in the morning and blah, blah, blah. But now just everybody’s just here at the house all day. So, in one way, it’s weird. But at the same time, I’m just always writing and spending time and all that. So it’s all mixed up in this sort of strange schedule of creating and putting things out. On one level, I think the quarantine has messed with production schedules, messed with the regular way that we have to deliver the things that we make. So people are doing things for more personal reasons. I’m interested to see what things come out of it and what aesthetics are built from this time.

Kweli: I think for me it’s very simple. For me — and I imagine it’s like this for a lot of people but I’ll only speak for myself — the focus right now is: “How am I going to feed my family?” How am I going to survive and how am I going to feed my family in this unstable world? How can I ensure that my people are not going to want for anything so that I can be more productive?

A month before this started I was hustling, but it was more like an autopilot hustle. Like things were in place. But now, once I make something — to feed that part of my soul — the focus immediately shifts to how can I get this out and support myself with it, because I deserve to and because I need to. That’s definitely, to me, more pressing now than it was a month before this started.

As a creator, is everything different after this? The systems that have failed us seem to be more clearly on display. Does that change how you create?

Kweli: Personally, I don’t know the temperature enough to know whether or not the masses are looking deeper into how capitalist systems work or if people are just looking for ways to be comfortable and convenient during this time. But I definitely think that it’s an interesting time for artists because we have to deal with pain and we have to provide comfort and we have to still figure out ways to make a living.

Riley: Look, what this situation, what this crisis has done is put a magnifying glass on who has the power and who has our interests at stake, which is why right now we’re in an unprecedented strike wave happening across the US. I think there’s somewhere between 35 and 40 strikes that have happened over the last two weeks, right? And a lot of them are still going on where people are saying, “Look, we don’t care” — or rather, “We do care. Your business is going to make no money or you’re going to make less money by keeping us safe.” And some of the strikes that are happening are things like the GE workers who were making jet engines and said, “No, we’re going on strike and demanding that we make ventilators.”

You have all these folks that are coming into not just the consciousness about what’s going on, but an awareness of where they’re able to apply power. That’s creating a new era that is going to guide artistic creation, not just for me but for millions of people who are not just coming up in a time where we’re stuck in our houses but coming up in a time when many of us are stuck in our houses and others are figuring out how to withhold their labor to demand compromise from the system, which ends up teaching young creators a lesson about how power works under capitalism.

All of this affects what I think needs to be said in my art. I don’t know exactly how it affects it, because it’s kind of like what I’m already talking about. But it affects where I think folks are at, and it affects how I think my art will be received, and it affects it aesthetically. It also affects it because I know that there will be other people making this art, and I think there’ll be a lot more. I didn’t come out of nowhere, I came out of a movement.

There’s a radical militant labor movement growing right now and we’re seeing it. We’re seeing it play out right now. I can’t predict what’s going to happen. I don’t know what kind of retaliation is going to happen. I don’t know what the capacity is for us to answer that retaliation. But it’s happening and it’s a different time that we’ll be talking about it — not just because of COVID-19 but because of how people dealt with it.

All of these contradictions in how the system works are becoming really glaringly obvious and there’s this whole new kind of radicalization of people in the United States. So you’d think that the art that big companies put out would be like, “Hey, let’s make something that all those folks agree with.” You’d think that we’d see more of that. But no, you’re about to see a lot of stuff come out like this fucking movie that I didn’t even see, but The Banker or whatever on Apple, whatever, where it’s like, “You want to see black power? See The Black Banker!” Just mark my words, you’re going to see a lot of that. You’re going to see both sides. You’re going to see people building and you’re going to see an effort to make it seem like this new radical movement isn’t happening.

It’s been a huge day for WWE, and not the good kind. The wrestling company, which was recently deemed an “essential business” by the state of Florida after an interesting SuperPAC donation, is releasing a growing list of wrestlers and backstage employees. Some of these performers have reacted to the cuts on social media, starting with an emotional video from Drake Maverick.

Maverick’s video was part gracious, teary farewell, part promo. He said that he’s “very grateful” that WWE is still allowing him to compete in the tournament for an interim NXT Cruiserweight Champion, which will begin on tonight’s episode of NXT. The tournament’s round-robin format means Maverick has three more WWE matches, and he says “it’s very likely those will be the last matches I’ll ever have” and promised fans that “you’re going to get everything I have.”

Retired wrestling legend Kurt Angle bid the WWE Universe farewell with a tweet, saying “I wanted 2 say thank you to the WWE for the time I spent there.I made many new friends and had the opportunity to work with so many talented people. To the Superstars, continue to entertain the WWE Universe as well as you possibly can. They’re the best fans in the world. #itstrue.”

Fit Finlay, who was furloughed from his position as a WWE producer, also reacted on Twitter. After responding to a comment that all the pubs in Ireland should be obligated to give him free pints for life with “These guys know!!!!”, he thanked his fans and wished the wrestling industry well: “To everyone on Gods green earth. Thank you for the kind words. I’ve been doing this for 46 years(Wrestling)I pray you all get through this and we can share a hug and drink again. Stay healthy.”

Shane “The Hurricane” Helms responded with a funny tweet, then an optimistic statement that “I truly believe that this is just temporary. There are many people in this world in far worse situations than I am, so please don’t worry about me too much.” Curt Hawkins said he wasn’t in the mood to joke about his release this time around.

Former Cruiserweight Champion Lio Rush released a longer statement about his WWE journey, and promised that “This isn’t the end nor the last you will be hearing the name #LioRush.”

Andrea Listenberger, the writer behind the Otis and Mandy storyline, revealed that she had been let go as well. She reflected that “I’m proud of the work I’ve been able to do since starting in Dec., and glad that the storyline I worked on resonated with so many people. That’s what writing is about for me.”

Rusev reacted to his release just long enough before WWE officially announced it for people to think he was trolling, with a tweet that said, “Thank you All, Rusev out!” This might be the WrestleMania tank entrance of WWE release reactions so far.

More statements from former WWE workers are likely to be released throughout the day, and this article will be updated accordingly.

The world remains at home in isolation and some musicians are using the quarantine as an opportunity to work on new projects. But 50 Cent and Post Malone are using the time to boost older efforts. The two rappers figured now would be a perfect time to release an official video for their 2015 track “Tryna F*ck Me Over.”

The video opens with 50 Cent and Post Malone sitting in a getaway car. The two accomplices detail their previous nights. Malone had gone home with a girl he was only slightly interested in, and 50 had managed to pull off a heist that awarded him some fast cash. Their conversation gets cut short when a police officer knocks on Malone’s window and 50 bolts from the passenger door. The remainder of the visual shows the duo showcasing their bars in a vibrant, club-like atmosphere. “Spent my life tryna be a good guy / Still people want to see me get got,” Posty raps.

Though the video is just now seeing a debut, it’s clear it was filmed several years ago. The time period can be indicated by Malone’s lack of face tattoos, which he just recently added to.

To promote the video, 50 Cent shared a doctored image of himself with Post Malone’s curly hair and signature “Always Tired” face tattoos.

Watch the “Tryna F*ck Me Over” video above.

Jayson Tatum has been a famous basketball player for a long time. Dating back to his days at Chaminade, basketball fans have known Tatum’s name, anxiously awaiting his NBA career. So while it’s an extraordinary feat to develop into an NBA superstar, many were hardly surprised when Tatum made that leap this season, scoring nearly 24 points per game on impressive efficiency.

At age 22, in just his third season, Tatum was going toe-to-toe with the NBA’s best players, scoring 39 in a nationally televised victory over Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers just before his first All-Star game. Out of the break, Tatum kept spewing fire, peaking in one of the best games of the NBA season on February 23 against LeBron James and the Lakers. Though the Lakers won and James outplayed Tatum, the young Celtic’s performance was enough to earn praise from the King.

In an Instagram post after the game, Tatum received incredibly nice praise from James, who is never one to be unnecessarily flowery to his competitors.

Though Tatum has been famous since he was a teenager and memorably dominated the Eastern Conference playoffs as a rookie, 2019-20 was a culmination of his hard work. This is the Tatum basketball fans thought they were getting when they hit YouTube for highlights shot at a rural Missouri gym a half-decade ago.

After Tatum and other members of the Gatorade team came together to announce on Twitter that Ypsilanti sophomore Emoni Bates won the Gatorade Player of the Year award, the significance of being on the other side of that moment was not lost on Tatum. For years, Tatum looked up to legendary pros, posing for pictures and clinging to their advice. Now, he’s one of the NBA stars lending a hand to a new generation.

“Talking about the NBA, it is a brotherhood,” Tatum told Dime over the phone. “It’s cool, I remember coming up through high school, any time I got to meet or talk to an NBA player, whether it was quick or if I saw them in person and got to ask for a picture. I remember talking to Kevin Durant on the phone, I remember meeting LeBron, then you fast forward and you’re playing against these guys your rookie year and they remember you and they say what’s up before the game. That’s really, really cool, because by the time you get to the NBA, you’re 18, 19 years old. So you’re still a kid and you’re still looking up to all these guys, but now you’re competing against them. That feeling is really special.”

Growing up in St. Louis, his first connection with a star was Bradley Beal, someone he watched excel at the high school level and then was able to get advice from while he was going through the same process

“Yeah, I think Brad Beal, he’s like my big brother. When I was in seventh grade, he won this award at my high school and I remember the day that he was (so) surprised. They gave him the award in front of the entire school and I remember that day like it was yesterday, and I remember telling myself, ‘I want to win that some day.’

“Me and him talked about it many times, and going through high school, he always gave me advice and he would come watch me play, and I eventually won it my senior year. It was just cool for me because I remember being in the gym as a seventh-grader watching him win, then five years later, fast forward at the same school and I was able to win.”

Now, he gets that chance with Bates, who he’s been able to see up close and personal a few times.

“The first time I met him, he was in L.A. working out in the gym that I was working out in [after my rookie season],” said Tatum. “That was the first time, but I had seen his highlights on Twitter and Instagram, that’s when I first was aware of him. Then a year ago around this time, I was down in Dallas with my former AAU team and my dad was down there. We went to go watch (Bates) play in the same tournament, so that’s how that came about.”

Bates is a special talent, as evidenced by him winning Gatorade Player of the Year as just a sophomore, and he figures to follow in the footsteps of guys like Tatum that go from high school star to challenging his idols in the NBA in a few years. Having already been welcomed in by that brotherhood will only help him navigate that path.

After the events of Avengers: Endgame, there’s been a large question mark around the future of Mark Ruffalo‘s Hulk as members of the original Avengers team began exiting the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans are both done as Iron Man and Captain America, respectively, while Scarlett Johansson’s time in the MCU will conclude after Black Widow (eventually) hits theaters.

But not all of the original team has left. Chris Hemsworth will be back in Thor: Love and Thunder, and Jeremy Renner is expected to appear in the Hawkeye series for Disney+. In a new interview with Variety, Ruffalo reveals he’s hoping to do a bit of both. Unfortunately, the actor also revealed that, currently, there are no official plans for the Hulk except for a possible cameo in the upcoming She-Hulk series, and even that isn’t fully locked down.

“If we come up with something good, that would be really interesting,” he tells Variety. “Right now that’s about it. That’s all there is on the table.”

While the actor could be pulling off some of that infamous MCU secrecy by not tipping his hand on upcoming projects before Marvel is ready to announce them, he doesn’t hold back by expressing his interest in a solo Hulk movie, which has always just been out of his reach.

“There’s an idea that I think could be really interesting,” Ruffalo said. “We’ve never really followed him into his life. He’s always kind of off on the side. He’s like the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the Avengers. It’d be interesting to fill in all the blanks about what happened to him in between all these movies.”

As if the thought of a solo film isn’t enough to get Hulk fans excited, Ruffalo took things a step further by teasing one particular character who has a long comic book history of battling the green giant, which Ruffalo devoured as a child. “Maybe Hulk and Wolverine could hook up,” he suggested. As X-Men fans know, Wolverine made his first appearance in an issue of “The Incredible Hulk” where the two rage-filled heroes exchanged blows in the woods of Canada. Could the MCU be planning a similar debut for its new version of the clawed mutant? Maybe, if Ruffalo has his say.

(Via Variety)

The bad news for WWE keeps coming, and it doesn’t look like there’s an end in sight.

WWE followed up Wednesday’s conference call warning of roster cuts, furloughs, and decreased salaries by immediately releasing numerous Superstars, including former Cruiserweight Champion Lio Rush, former Tag Team Champions and Boneyard Match participants Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, and Heath Slater, who has kids.

The latest announced cuts are nine WWE producers, including a number of recognizable names from the company’s history. Per Pro Wrestling Sheet, the producers have been furloughed and not outright released.

So far, the confirmed list of producers furloughed by the company on Wednesday afternoon includes:

• Billy Kidman
• Mike Rotunda
• Dave ‘Fit’ Finlay
• Scott Armstrong
• Sarah Stock
• Shane ‘Hurricane’ Helms
• Lance Storm
• Shawn Daivari
• Pat Buck

How can you do this to Mike Rotunda, the former Irwin R. Schyster on Tax Day? It’s also notable that Lance Storm closed his wrestling school back in November of 2019 to take the position with WWE, and is furloughed a mere five months later. Such a shame to see a number of legends who have been instrumental in the creation and development of WWE talent over the past several years losing their positions, even temporarily, due to cost-cutting measures.

As always, we’ll keep you updated on any additional names whose releases are announced today.

Vince McMahon made it clear earlier today in that big conference call that cuts were coming, including to talent. Once the employees were warned, it didn’t take long for the names to start coming out. Per an announcement on WWE.com, they’ve announced the release of eight Superstars as of this writing:

WWE has come to terms on the release of Drake Maverick (James Curtin), Curt Hawkins (Brian Myers), Karl Anderson (Chad Allegra), Luke Gallows (Drew Hankinson), Heath Slater (Heath Miller), Eric Young (Jeremy Fritz), EC3 (Michael Hutter) and Lio Rush (Lionel Green). We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

None of these are exactly shocking, as they haven’t been pushed as big stars in WWE (and some like EC3 haven’t even been on TV in months), but that’s a lot of people to let go at one time, as opposed to their usual release announcements that come in ones and twos. Also, Drake Maverick was announced as a competitor in the NXT Cruiserweight Tournament, where he’ll now need to be replaced.

When this news story was first posted on WWE.com, it only listed Maverick, Hawkins, Maverick, EC3, and Rush, but it was edited within a few minutes to add Gallows, Slater, and Young. That may mean more names are on the way, presumably as they’re informed personally so they don’t learn they’ve lost their jobs via the website.

Update: Aiden English, who has most recently been working on commentary, has now been added to the list, as well as WWE Hall Of Famer Kurt Angle.

Update 2: Sarah Logan, formerly of the Riott Squad, has now been released, as has referee Mike Chioda, who has been with WWE since 1989.

Dwayne Johnson doesn’t strike me as a guy who hears “no” often. He was (and still occasionally is) an extremely popular wrestler who transitioned into an extremely popular actor with multiple franchises to his name. Also, people call him “The Rock” like that’s totally normal. But one of his biggest career what-ifs is the franchise that he’s not part of.

When asked on Instagram if there was a movie role that he “wanted but lost to another actor,” Johnson replied, “In Hollywood, actors are kind of like in-a-box. There are actors that can vie for a particular role because it allows for them to have a certain look, skin color, size, etc. Fortunately, for me, there aren’t a lot of guys at all who look like me. So, all of my roles, from the beginning of my career, I’ve been a lucky son of a b*tch that they’ve been created and designed for me — except Jack Reacher.” Yup, Johnson wanted to play Jack Reacher, a role that went to Tom Cruise, despite Cruise being 5′ 7″ and Jack Reacher, the book character, being 6′ 5″. The same height as the Rock.

He added, “Now, this was ten years ago, and I was in a much different place, I recognize that. Tom was the biggest movie star in the world, and I was not… I’m positive that the role of Jack Reacher, because it was an established character, an IP that was well known and beloved around the world, that I wouldn’t have had the creative space to do what I wanted with the character. I look back in gratitude that I didn’t get Jack Reacher.”

This worked out well for everyone: Tom Cruise got to star in Jack Reacher and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, two fun movies in a “lazy afternoon on TNT” kind of way, and because the Rock’s availability was open, he received a phone call from Universal to make a cameo in Fast Five. Eventually leading to this great moment in cinema history.

(Via Collider)

Most festivals and concerts have either been postponed or canceled entirely for weeks now, and there’s really no word yet on when some of them might come back. Generally, it looks like most events are rescheduling for the fall, like Coachella, which was pushed back from April to October. It remains to be seen if that will be enough of a delay. California Governor Gavin Newsom seems to think it’s not necessarily a matter of time, but that it’s more about one important thing happening.

Newsom answered questions during a press event yesterday (April 14), and he was asked about when he thinks life in California can return to normal (or closer to it). He suggested that mass gatherings (like concerts) likely won’t come back until a coronavirus vaccine is widely available, saying, “The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine. So large-scale events that bring in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of strangers, all together across every conceivable difference, health and otherwise, is not in the cards based upon our current guidelines and current expectations. […] When you suggest June, July, August: it is unlikely.”

This comes after Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases, said earlier this month that a vaccine could be a year to 18 months away.

Watch Newsom’s explanation above.