Category: Viral

You know how the story goes with limited series these days. Once ratings explode, the “limited” is no more, and as is the case with FX’s Shōgun, multiple additional seasons have suddenly been greenlit. More of James Clavell’s Asian Saga will therefore come to FX (and Hulu), and presumably, the series will at least somewhat follow the continued source material for this 1600s feudal Japan war story.

The ratings justified this decision, too, despite the first season being an extensive production that yielded 9 million views (higher than fellow critical darling The Bear) for the opening episodes within a week of initial airtime. Even George R.R. Martin paused his recent grumpfest to enjoy Shōgun, which he presumably believes is a better adaptation than HotD‘s second season.

As of now, we know that Hiroyuki Sanada will return as Toranaga, and Anna Sawai will not be back as as Toda Mariko, but what of Cosmo Jarvis as marooned English navigator John Blackthorne? FX hasn’t yet revealed that Jarvis will officially return, but Sanada appears to believe that Toranaga won’t let him go anywhere, as he previously told USA Today:

“Blackthorne is useful to Toranaga, who wants to keep him in Japan and not let him go back to England,” says Sanada. “And when Blackthorne builds the ship again, he’ll burn it again.”

That sounds like a (clearly paraphrased) “sure, it’s not set in stone, but come on, where can Blackthorne really go?”

Also, will FX seize the chance to use the book’s explicit running joke about Blackthorne being extremely well endowed, an attribute that was purposefully left out of the first season? Sure, co-creator and co-showrunner Justin Marks did tell Decider that the writers felt, “I think we can find new humor and be funnier in ways.” Yet few people expected more Shōgun seasons, so why not seize that moment?

Literary endowment or not, we don’t yet know when Shōgun will return for a second season.

Ever since her star turn in 2022 with “F.N.F. (Let’s Go),” GloRilla has been one of the most charming stars in rap. Every interview is a gold mine of meme moments, from shooting her shot with NBA star Damian Lillard to coining hilarious catchphrases. But of her most delightful moments (which include revealing rap relations with both Lil Uzi Vert and Cardi B), the thing it seems fans can’t help getting hung up on is her Memphis accent.

During her recent interview with Complex‘s Speedy Morman — which you can watch in full above — the topic came up after the host couldn’t stop cackling about her pronunciations of words and phrases like “newsfeed,” “beautiful spirit,” “cute,” and anything with the “ew” sound in it. “How often do you speak and people comment?” Morman asked. “All the time,” she admitted with a thousand watt grin. “I’m used to it now, but I just be like, ‘Dang, y’all really don’t understand me.’ It’s like I speak Spanish and sh*t.” The Complex editors were nice enough to collect a compilation of her best accent moments from the interview. Check it out:

GloRilla is gearing up to release her first-ever album, Glorious, which is out 10/11 via CMG/Interscope. You can find more info here.

Incredibly, The Cure have been around since the late ’70s and they’re still going. That’s not to say they’ve been perfectly consistent: Their latest album is 4:13 Dream from 2008. Finally, though, the band has a new album, their first in 16 years, on the way.

Last month, they announced Songs Of A Lost World and shared the lead single “Alone.” Now, Robert Smith and company have offered another taste with “A Fragile Thing,” a new single shared today (October 9).

It sees Smith telling the story of a difficult relationship, singing, “‘And there’s nothing you can do to change it back,’ she said / ‘Nothing you can do but sing / This love is a fragile thing / Nothing you can do now but pretend again.’”

Smith recently said of previous single “Alone,” “It’s the track that unlocked the record; as soon as we had that piece of music recorded, I knew it was the opening song, and I felt the whole album come into focus. […] As soon as we finished recording, I remembered the poem ‘Dregs’ by the English poet Ernest Dowson… and that was the moment when I knew the song — and the album — were real.”

Listen to “A Fragile Thing” above.

Songs Of A Lost World is out 11/1 via Fiction Records. Find more information here.

Does Apple TV+ still count as a fledgling streaming service? Surely not at nearly the five-year mark, but it could use more sci-fi, that’s for sure, because Apple TV+ nearly always nails that genre, from Silo to Severance to Sunny. Well, more sci-fi is what you shall receive with a Skarsgård to keep the alliteration strong in this paragraph.

Mr. Alexander Skarsgård, to be precise, will be joining this streamer’s sci-fi collection. He’s also been bouncing all over TV lately between Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Stand, Succession, and Big Little Lies, and now, he will both star in and executive produce the adaptation of a bestselling and award-winning series of sci-fi books, so let’s get down to business on what to expect.

Plot

We skipped mentioning a few more Apple TV+ sci-fi series ^^^ and cannot go further without alluding to For All Mankind, Foundation, Invasion, and Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters. How will Murderbot rank among them? We obviously cannot predict this yet, but Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries books are regarded as a spectacular example of worldbuilding and span seven books (including novellas and full-length novels) as well as short stories. So, if a first season goes well, there will be plenty more source material.

Skarsgård will portray the lead, known as (you guessed it) “Murderbot,” who would much rather chill out and watch soapy TV shows than act on homicidal directives, as confirmed by the Apple TV+ synopsis:

“Murderbot” is an action-packed sci-fi series, based on the award-winning books by Wells, about a self-hacking security android who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable “clients.” Murderbot must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe.

Cast

In addition to the leading man, expect to see a wide array of other bots and augmented humans. As Deadline reports, the first season cast will include Tamara Podemski (as Bharadwaj), Tattiawna Jones (as Arada), Sabrina Wu (as Pin-Lee), and Akshay Khanna (as Ratthi).

Release Date

That would be a nebulous subject. Apple TV+ did publicly announce the series in late 2023. Casting news was still unfurling this past March, and sci-fi does tend to require plenty of post-production time for effects, so late 2025 would be optimistic, and 2026 sounds more realistic.

Trailer

Dream on. However and since we’ve already mentioned this recent A-Skars appearance, please enjoy his squirrelly appearance in Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

The annual NBA GM survey always leads to some interesting insights into how the league’s front offices view the rest of the NBA, but it also always has some bizarre responses that don’t exactly make a ton of sense.

This year, the question of what player will have a breakout season led to one such response, as Ja Morant was among those who got three votes, which is a bit bizarre given Morant has two All-Star appearances and an All-NBA selection already on his resume. None of the other top selections are exactly under the radar guys, but there’s at least another level or two for each to still leap into to be considered a full-on superstar. Morant, when he’s been healthy and on the court, has very few questions about his place as one of the league’s best point guards, so while he might be a comeback player contender, breakout seems…off.

Fans weren’t the only ones with some questions about why Morant was on this list, as Morant himself responded to a graphic with the list wondering (respectfully) why he’s being included.

It’s not the first time Morant hasn’t been thrilled with this type of recognition, as he didn’t feel like he should’ve won the Most Improved Player award in 2021-22 when he became an All-NBA player — saying Desmond Bane should’ve been the pick from the Grizzlies.

20 years ago, Philadelphia singer Jaguar Wright was best known for features songs like The Roots’ “What You Want” from The Best Man soundtrack and as a backup vocalist for Jay-Z’s Unplugged special on MTV. However, lately, her name has been associated with Jay-Z for a different reason: namely, a recent appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored for which the often contentious and controversial host actually apologized earlier this week. So, what did Jaguar Wright say about Jay-Z that prompted the show host’s apology?

During her interview with Morgan, she equated Jay-Z to the recently indicted music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, claiming that Jay and his wife Beyoncé also participated in similar illicit and salacious activities to the ones Diddy is currently under investigation. Wright reportedly said that Jay is “worse than Diddy,” while admitting that she had no firsthand knowledge of the accused activities. “I have three victims right now who are willing to give testimony on not only what Mr. Carter has done to them, but his wife as well,” she said. “They’re a nasty little couple. They do nasty things… Keeping people against their will! Putting people on planes while they’re unconscious.”

This isn’t the first time Wright has trafficked in conspiracy theories, nor is it the first time Jay-Z has been linked to Diddy’s activities without evidence. In 2020, the singer trended for alleging that breakout R&B star Summer Walker had been sexually assaulted. Meanwhile, conspiracy theories surrounding Jay-Z — likely due to the mogul’s similar position to Combs in the public consciousnesses as a symbol of financial excess and “Black excellence” — encompassed a recent YouTube publishing dispute.

However, as of this writing, there’s no evidence that Jay-Z ever participated in one of Diddy’s illegal “freak offs.” Morgan, who appears to have done his guest vetting after the fact (and after receiving a sternly worded letter from Jay-Z’s lawyer), also seems to have distanced himself from the possibly specious claims. “The reality of the modern world is that pretty much everyone has a platform as long as they have something to say that other people want to hear,” he said. “That’s why we invited her on to be interviewed… But, like the proverbial cries of fire in a crowded theater, there are legal limits on us, too. And we apologize to Jay-Z and Beyoncé.”

You can watch the uncensored interview here.

Just in time for Halloween, Stephen King has revealed his favorite horror movie.

As a kid, the author’s answer for the “scariest” movie was 1966’s The Haunting, which got a mostly terrible 1999 remake. Speaking of 1999 horror flicks, The Blair Witch Project was King’s favorite when he got older, but now, at 77 years old, it’s director George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

“This movie has lost its elemental power over the years — has become almost a Midnite Madness joke, like Rocky Horror — but I still remember the helpless terror I felt when I first saw it,” he wrote for Variety about the black-and-white zombie masterpiece. “And now that I think of it, there’s a real similarity to Blair Witch, both with minimal or no music, both cast with unknown actors who seem barely capable of summer stock in Paducahville, both with low-tech special effects. They work not in spite of those things, but because of them.”

You can stream Night of the Living Dead on Peacock.

King previously revealed his favorite adaptations of his own work. “I have a number that I like, but I love The Shawshank Redemption and I’ve always enjoyed working with Frank. He’s a sweet guy. Frank Darabont,” he told Deadline. “And I love the Rob Reiner thing, Stand by Me.” The Shawshank Redemption isn’t a horror movie, although crawling through a “river of “sh*t” is pretty terrifying.

Chicago-based visionary Cole Bennett started out shooting for up-and-coming teens and twenty-something blog favorites, but in the past five years, he has become one of rap’s foremost music video directors, working with top names like Eminem, J. Cole, Lil Durk, and more. He’s even shot for actor Jack Black, delivering a colorful video for Black’s Super Mario Bros. Movie crowd-pleaser, “Peaches.”

“I was a very visual person, but I never knew that I loved music videos,” Bennett said in a 2021 XXL interview. “I always had this idea since I was super young of what it would look like if I made a music video.” For nearly a decade, Bennett has been bringing these ideas to life to the praise of the artists he works with and his growing fan base.

With that being said, we decided to scour Bennett’s Lyrical Lemonade page for his best work. Here are the 10 best Cole Bennett-directed music videos.

Honorable Mention: JID & J. Cole — “Off Deez”

Okay, it’s a pretty basic concept with workmanlike execution, but it might be the best song Bennett’s ever done a video for. JID and J. Cole are left turns for Cole Bennett, if you take in the entirety of his filmography, so it was pretty meaningful that the Dreamville cohorts teamed up with him on this standout from JID’s DiCaprio 2. It’d be nice to see them do it again.

10. Ski Mask The Slump God — “Catch Me Outside”

An early standout from both Bennett and Ski Mask The Slump God, “Catch Me Outside” perfectly illustrates the possibilities of a limited budget when you’ve got unlimited imagination. Awash with eye-popping visual effects, “Catch Me Outside” offers a prime example of Cole’s early style; it’s raw, but flashes of his future brilliance shine throughout. Many of the techniques Bennett used here eventually became hallmarks of his style, and with polish, set off the concepts of his future videos with Cordae and Eminem.

9. Central Cee — “Doja”

As “Doja” is one of Bennett’s more recent videos, its simplicity might seem out of place in a list featuring so many brain-bending, colorful visuals. But it also marks Bennett’s transition from colorful collaborator to kingmaker; Central Cee is a star stateside after working with Bennett, making the most of essentially an indie budget to secure the coveted director’s services and show he belongs on the biggest stage.

8. Jack Harlow — “What’s Poppin”

While the visuals are pretty tame for a Cole Bennett production, Harlow’s “What’s Poppin” video is still representative of the elements that have made Bennett’s videos so eye-catching and amusing. Even the low-key imagery mirrors Jack’s tongue-in-cheek humor, highlighting and elevating it with some juxtaposed elements as bottle service and satin sheets at a late-night diner and a woman “smoking” a french fry like a cigarette. It’s also impossible to discount what the video did for Harlow’s career, taking him from an indie unknown to a potential chart-topper with 170 million views.

7. Drake — “Another Late Night” Feat. Lil Yachty

Say what you want about Drake, but “Another Late Night,” at least visually, has been the height of his last couple of rough years. Drake and Yachty have great chemistry, and despite the relatively straightforward treatment, the video manages to be eye-catching and stand out from the rest of Drake’s admittedly wonky catalog.

6. Lil Durk — “Kanye Krazy”

Bennett’s referential style comes to a head in Durk’s “Kanye Krazy” video. Pulling from infamous clips from the titular auteur’s oeuvre and public outbursts, Durk reimagines the videos for “Runaway,” “Bound 2,” and “I Love It” — specifically, the moments in which Kanye’s mental illness seems to have gotten the better of him, for better or worse. This was just after Drake’s “Laugh Now Cry Later” had put Durk back on the national map, so to speak, so the cheeky visuals helped aid in lending mainstream audiences a better sense of Durk’s personality outside his harrowing drill stories.

5. BabyTron — “100 Bars”

BabyTron, like Central Cee’s “Doja,” is a more recent addition to Bennett’s filmography, albeit one with a much higher concept. It’s executed deliriously well, with a new BabyTron outfit/persona for each of the titular “100 Bars” and seamless transitions between each. It’s a format that Bennett would return to with Eminem’s “Tobey,” but it’s impressive that the Detroit and Chicago natives were able to make this work without the benefit of a huge star (and the accompanying budget). BabyTron, for all the lethargy of his flow on the song, also appears to be having a ball, as does comedian Andy Milonakis in his cameo role.

4. Eminem — “Godzilla”

“Godzilla” is the moment Cole Bennett “made it,” in the sense that he began working with established megastars like Eminem in addition to the SoundCloud standouts in his own DIY cohort. Fittingly, the increased budget came along with some stunning visual effects to spice up the flow of the video’s narrative while enhancing Bennett’s trademark surrealism. Em gets punched in the face by Mike Tyson, breathes fire, vomits Legos, and performs surgery alongside longtime collaborator Dr. Dre. And speaking of collaborators, “Godzilla” is a hallmark moment for Marshall too; it’s the first time he really embraced the SoundCloud rappers he’d formerly spent huge segments of his albums belittling.

3. Polo G — “My All”

Of all Cole Bennett’s most frequent collaborators, he most frequently turns in his best work with hometown artists like Juice WRLD and Polo G. In the video for “My All,” the Chi-Town natives tone down the usual comedic elements of Cole’s catalog in favor of something more emotionally resonant. It looks simple, but it’s not; a seated Polo performs the lyrics as a montage of memories both celebratory and traumatic, scroll behind him. The fourth wall break at the end is a fun surprise.

2. Cordae & Juice WRLD — “Doomsday”

My personal favorite out of the videos presented here, “Doomsday” takes a simple concept and adds stupendous visual flair with the aid of facial overlay technology. This is how you pay homage to departed artists; Cordae puts on a clinic as both himself and his late friend Juice WRLD, while Cole puts deepfake algos to an actual artistic use that doesn’t require stealing the work of real artists.

1. Juice WRLD — “Lucid Dreams”

The video that put Bennett on my personal radar, “Lucid Dreams” is far from his most stunning. But it’s hard to argue with a billion views; “Lucid Dreams” is the song that made Juice a star, it’s still his biggest song to date, and the video displays Cole’s gift for dreamlike visuals, which also fits the theme of the song.

There’s probably at least some subset of Drake fans who are also passionate about fly fishing. For those select few, today is a massive day, as it has finally happened: Drake is on the cover of the Fall 2024 issue of The Drake, a long-running quarterly fly fishing magazine.

It appears this isn’t just Drake having fun with his and the magazine’s names, though, as the cover serves as some clever marketing.

On the cover, Drake is standing in the middle of a stream, fly fishing away. Notably, he’s wearing multiple pieces from his company Nocta’s new line with Nike, the “Opal” collection. It’s not available to buy yet, but the caption of a new promo video shared on Instagram today (October 9) explains, “The Opal Collection is a return to NOCTA’s core DNA- premium outerwear, vests and apparel inspired by sport and culture. Engineered for performance and crafted with intention, each piece is designed for seamless adaptability across diverse environments. Stay tuned for details and release info.”

For those who like looking for hidden meanings where there likely aren’t any: In August, ASAP Rocky said of his beef with Drake, “I got bigger fish to fry.” Do with that information what you will.

Speaking of Drake-related merch, OVO recently announced the “Hometown Heroes Collection,” which includes hoodies, t-shirts, and basketball and hockey jerseys featuring OVO branding, in partnership with the NBA’s Toronto Raptors and the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs.

Netflix’s ‘Starting 5’ series debuted on Wednesday, as fans were given a behind the scenes look at the lives and seasons of LeBron James, Anthony Edwards, Jayson Tatum, Domantas Sabonis, and Jimmy Butler. The series offers a unique look at how they all navigate the 2023-24 season both on the court and off of it.

For Anthony Edwards, that means becoming a father and figuring out what that means, but for Jimmy Butler, we learned it meant dealing with a tremendous loss. In episode 4 of the series, Butler reveals that his father died in early February, just before the All-Star break, and the series shows him trying to deal with the grief of that loss while still playing. In episode 5, which looks at All-Star and the start of the stretch run, Butler opens up about his struggles finding his typical mental edge as he works out, knowing the Heat need him to turn it on for the playoff push.

“Right after All-Star break, my teammates, they really need me to be a lot better. I want to always answer to that call,” Butler says. “But I could care less about basketball right now. I don’t care. Yeah I work out. Yes, I train. Because I love to do it and it takes my mind off of my dad. For that moment, I’m lost in the game and the art in getting better. But as soon as that ball’s done bouncing and I’m back home, it all settles in. Man, it sucks to hurt. It sucks to lose people. They expect you to be superhuman, which is it’s a thing in itself. But I’m very much human, and I’m hurting right now as we speak. And I hate talking about it. I hate it, but here we are.”

In the first game back from the break, Butler led the Heat to a win in New Orleans, scoring 23 points in 27 minutes, but was ejected after an altercation with Naji Marshall. The episode shows all of that, with Butler talking about all the emotions he was dealing with at the time, and how rarely athletes get looked at on the human side of things.

“I don’t think you understand until you understand, but athletes are human, too. We hurt and we cry and we grieve and we’re angry when something is going on in our life,” Butler said. “And you can’t see it, just like we can’t see what’s going on in your life either. But that doesn’t make us a bad person for being human.”

That is, more than anything else, the benefit of a series like ‘Starting 5’, as it offers a chance to see players living their lives off the court and presenting a reminder that, like all of us, they are navigating the ups and downs of life while also playing professional basketball. Butler kept his father’s passing quiet publicly prior to the series, but being open about his grief and struggles with finding the same joy and purpose on the basketball court gives some perspective on his season and everything he was dealing with.