Category: Viral

The 2023 BET Awards highlighted a number of rap’s new it-girls, from Doechii and GloRilla to Ice Spice and Latto, but there was one who missed the cutoff to receive recognition. That didn’t stop her from creating her own opportunity, though.

Sexyy Red, who blew up late last year with her raunchy singles “Born By The River” and “Pound Town,” wasn’t booked to perform at the BET Awards, so she gave her own impromptu performance of the latter in the crowd when it played over the PA. The fans in her section seemed pretty amped up to see her stand up and begin rapping along, encouraging her with calls of “Aye!” One woman even stood up with Red and started twerking on her. Check it out below.

The BET Awards were plenty eventful outside of the performances as well. While the focus of the evening was rightly on the celebration of 50 years of hip-hop and a lifetime achievement award for Busta Rhymes, there were enough extracurriculars to keep fans buzzing even after the show ended. JT and Lil Uzi Vert got into some kind of altercation, leading to JT throwing her phone at Uzi. Meanwhile, Latto was so psyched at winning Best Female Hip-Hop Artist, she ran onto the stage missing a shoe.

The five Titanic tourists on the OceanGate submersible included a 19-year-old young man who was “terrified” and didn’t want to go on the voyage. The vessel disappeared on Father’s Day, and then three days later (on June 21), Netflix widely released their July listings of new original programming and additions to the streaming library.

At that time, no one yet knew (other than James Cameron and associates) that the submarine’s passengers and OceanGate CEO had perished in a catastrophic implosion. That news arrived on Friday, and now, people are taking notice of James Cameron’s Titanic returning to Netflix on July 1. The timing either couldn’t be worse or better, depending upon one’s perspective (Celine Dion’s movie theme song saw a boost amid the tragedy’s development), although Netflix has apparently stayed quiet on the matter.

This all appears to be sheer coincidence, and notably, the July listings also contain a July 19 release date for a deep-diving documentary called The Deepest Breath. Netflix also released a trailer (days after the OceanGate disappearance), which begins with this narration: “Free diving is one of the world’s deadliest extreme sports.”

As one can imagine (and as The Hollywood Reporter points out), not everyone is thrilled even though THR notes that one outlet had already been tipped about the Titanic return to Netflix. Let’s just say that feelings were mixed, and one user believes that “[t]he timing is so wrong” while others point out that Titanic is already streaming on Amazon Prime and Paramount+.

Additionally, some Twitter users are falsely claiming that Netflix already began streaming a documentary geared specifically toward the OceanGate implosion, but that’s not a correct statement. One doc has surfaced already, yet it hailed from Channel 5 in the UK and began streaming Thursday, which is the day that the implosion confirmation surfaced and passengers were confirmed dead by the Coast Guard. Overall, it’s not the best timing on any of these fronts, but some of this programming was already planned and presumably ready to roll before the submersible went missing.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

The Righteous Gemstones once again unleashed its secret weapon: Letting Walton Goggins cut loose with an earworm of a country gospel song. Granted, it’s hard to top the magic of “Misbehavin” from Season 1, but Goggins returned in Season 3 with an extremely Gemstones-esque performance of “There Will Come a Payday” that gives his prior hit a run for its money, presumably with a pickle in its mouth.

While standing in front of a pool at the Gemstones new resort, Zion’s Landing, a clamshell-clad Goggins belts out the tune in a surreal music video that gives off weird Elvis vibes while also taking the audiences through a journey of how Baby Billy sees himself after all of his trials and tribulations.

As for what it’s like getting Goggins to tackle a musical number, you couldn’t ask for a better collaborator, according to The Righteous Gemstones composer Joseph Stevens.

Via IndieWire:

“We had him do a variety of takes. One that was maybe a little more reserved, one that kind of went for it a little more. What we ended up going with was the middle of that road,” Stephens said. “But Walton is a consummate professional with all this stuff. All the vocal demands that we put on him for the show, he always comes very prepared, and he’s at the ready to do it however we propose. He came in and knocked it out. It’s all great and we don’t really need much after we get a few.”

In a recent interview with Uproxx, Goggins also opened up about Billy Baby’s “Elvis” moment, and how it all came down to costume designer Christina Flannery. “She stepped right in and the day that we were filming that episode they brought this clamshell out and I put it on, it went to places that I had no idea it was going to go.”

“Danny (McBride) directed that episode,” Goggins revealed. “And he had ideas for this and turned it into a quasi-music video and the way that Baby Billy sees himself, it’s like a psychological montage, if you will. I just thought it was brilliant, man. I had no idea that it was going to go that way.”

The Righteous Gemstones Season 3 airs Sunday nights on HBO.

(Via IndieWire)

Donald Trump is continuing to throw a tantrum over the possibility that he might have to debate his fellow GOP presidential candidates, and his latest rant takes aim at, who else, Fox News. Why is The Donald so angry at his former favorite news program this time, you might ask? It’s because Rupert Murdoch’s cronies refused to air live footage of Trump receiving a very prestigious award from a very prestigious institution.

We kid. In actuality, Trump was bestowed with the Oakland County Republican Party’s “Man of the Decade” award Sunday night — an honor that means absolutely nothing considering the group was using Trump’s keynote speech to charge up to $7,500 for tickets to their event. But if there’s one thing this deflated basketball with baby doll hands loves, it’s the chance to add even more fake titles to his long list of made-up accolades. That Fox News had the gall to deem the event not newsworthy was always going to be an insult that led Trump to overreact on social media.

After claiming his “great trade policies” were the real reason Oakland County Republicans invited him to something called the Lincoln Day Dinner, Trump unleashed on the network, claiming the staged debates were simply another way the mainstream media wanted to capitalize on his name for better ratings. He called out his biggest Republican rival, Governor Ron DeSantis, claiming he was ahead in the polls by 40 points after taking shots at the network itself, highlighting their recent drop in viewership that likely has more to do with Tucker Carlson’s departure than any negative press surrounding Trump.

Will the former president actually skip the debate stage ahead of the Republican primaries? Probably not, but we’re having a great time watching him pitch a fit while being dragged to the podium.

There’s some drama going down between Cardi B and Offset right now, and it’s all playing out online.

On Instagram today (June 26), Offset shared a Story of text that read, “My wife f*cked a N**** on me gang yall n****s know how I come,” before deleting the post.

After that, Cardi hosted a three-minute Twitter Spaces session. During the broadcast, she addressed the situation. She started by singing some of Keyshia Cole’s “I Should Have Cheated”: “First of all, let me say… first of all, let me say, you can’t accuse me of all the things you know that you are guilty of.” After giving her virtual audience a “sing it with me, y’all,” she continued singing, “And I see that it is easy for you to blame everything on me. Yes, honey.”

She then dropped the singing bit and started speaking normally, continuing, “Listen: Don’t pay attention to that country man, y’all. Don’t pay attention to the country man. […] I’m f*cking Cardi B, n****. I think sometimes, motherf*ckers forget I’m Cardi B. If I was giving this p*ssy to anybody, it would be out. I’m just not anybody. I can’t f*ckin’ no regular degular shmegular because they gon’ tell the world. I can’t f*ck nobody in the industry cause they gon’ tell, too.”

She concluded, “Like, get the f*ck outta here, n****. Like, you can’t be serious. Sh*t got me so f*ckin’ hot, on my mama, b*tch. Would have broke a bottle on his f*ckin’ head for even playing with me if he was next to me. Don’t play, motherf*cker. Got me looking f*ckin’ crazy and sh*t for no reason. Anyways, I’m out. Y’all know what it is, bye.”

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

For the past couple of years, Lil Uzi Vert has been teasing the release of their third studio album, The Pink Tape. However, much like the release of Uzi’s prior album, Eternal Atake, the rollout has been… let’s just say, “less than smooth.” Uzi’s producer Lyle Leduff posited that the genre-bending, gender-nonconforming artist had recorded over 1,500 songs, prompting them to push it back to make sure it “won’t suck.”

Today, Uzi rewarded fans’ patience by announcing the official release date for The Pink Tape: This Friday, June 30. Uzi announced the release with a heavy metal-backed, anime-inspired trailer that sees Uzi in full action-movie-hero guise, sword fighting their way through an ancient temple as the guardians blast at Uzi with pink energy beams. The trailer ends with Uzi acquiring a pink stone from the final guardian and putting it — where else? — on his forehead, right where he previously sported a pink gem of his own before taking it out due to some fan jostling.

Uzi also shared the album cover art via XXL‘s Twitter page. You can check that out below.

The Pink Tape is due on 6/30 via Atlantic Records/Generation Now.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

James Gunn knows superhero movies as well as anyone. He’s directed films for both Marvel (the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy) and DC (The Suicide Squad, the forthcoming Superman: Legacy), but without naming names, he thinks the quality of the pop culture-dominating genre has gone down in recent years.

“People have gotten really lazy with their superhero stories,” Gunn said on the Inside of You podcast. “And they have gotten to the place where, ‘Oh, it’s a superhero, let’s make a movie about it.’ And then, ‘Oh, let’s make a sequel, because the first one did pretty well,’ and they aren’t thinking about, ‘Why is this story special? What makes this story stand apart from other stories? What is the story at the heart of it all? Why is this character important? What makes this story different that it fills a need for people in theaters to go see?’”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, to name a recent example, was a fun watch because it combined the stuff you would expect from a superhero movie, like Drax punching a weird alien’s lights out, with genuine affection for the characters. Sure, one of the characters is a talking raccoon, but don’t tell me you didn’t get misty-eyed during the flashback scenes.

Gunn continued, “People have gotten a little lazy and there’s a lot of biff-pow-bam stuff happening in movies and I’m watching third acts of superhero films where I really just don’t feel like there’s a rhyme or reason to what’s happening. I don’t care about the characters. And they’ve gotten too generic.”

In unrelated news, The Flash had the biggest week-to-week drop off for a superhero movie since Morbius.

You can listen to the podcast below.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Last week saw the release of Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s “Barbie World,” a new take on Aqua’s classic “Barbie Girl” recorded for the Barbie movie. It turns out that fans have star Margot Robbie to thank in part for the song’s existence.

In a new feature about the music of the Barbie movie, Rolling Stone notes how outraged fans were when Aqua said last year that their song wouldn’t be in the movie. The publication continued, “Even though it wasn’t in the script, Gerwig’s plan all along was to find a place for it, especially since Robbie and others were begging for it.”

Margot Robbie said, “I was like, ‘Greta, how are we going to incorporate this song? We can’t do a Barbie movie and not have a nod to Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl.’ It has to be in there.’ And [Greta] was like, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to find a cool way to incorporate it.’ And then, when she was like, ‘Guess who’s going to do the remix of Aqua’s “Barbie Girl”? Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice.’ I was like, ‘Together? Are you joking?!’ I just knew immediately that all my girlfriends were going to lose their minds.”

Mark Ronson also made note how how natural a fit Minaj was for the song, saying, “I feel like people have been asking Nicki to rhyme over some version of ‘Barbie Girl’ for 15 years now.”

Check out the full feature here.

Whoopi Goldberg‘s week is off to a hilarious start. While teeing up a Hot Topics segment for The View on Monday morning, Goldberg flubbed a line on her cue cards that left her co-hosts and the audience dying with laughter thanks to the profane slip-up.

The topic discussion was travel, which seemed innocuous enough until Whoopi took things to a whole other level.

“A poll of 2,000 adults in the U.K. found that, when people travel, cuisine is more important to them than landmarks or bitches,” Goldberg said before quickly realizing what she did and blurting “Beaches!”

Of course, by that point, the cat was out of the bag. The audience was roaring with laughter, and the co-hosts couldn’t contain themselves as they cracked up over the flub. Ever the professional, Goldberg played the moment up before attempting to get the topic back on track.

Via Entertainment Weekly:

“I’m sorry. It says beaches. This is y’all’s fault,” Goldberg said, laughing before the camera cut to a shot of executive producer Brian Teta sitting to the side of the table. “I can’t even tell you why it’s their fault. We were talking about something else!”

However, co-host Ana Navarro couldn’t help but slip in one last crack.

“I will travel anywhere for a good bitch,” Navarro said. That quip earned her a playful side-eye and an acerbic “Thank you” from Goldberg, who truly lived up to the nickname Stephen A. Smith accidentally coined ahead of his 2015 guest-hosting gig on The View.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist are once again teaming up for a release, with both artists sharing the cover art for something called Flying High dropping this Friday, June 30. While fans appear to be speculating that it’s a joint album from Earl and Al with the latter on production, the two have given few details, although clicking on the cover art on Alchemist’s post pulls up the names of some of their frequent collaborators like Billy Woods, Boldy James, Jay Worthy, Larry June, and MIKE, suggesting that it could be The Alchemist’s project with all those rappers featured.

The Alchemist has worked with most of the artists listed above as recently as early this year. He and Boldy James have released four projects together to date, with the most recent being Super Tecmo Bo in 2021, while he and Larry June dropped The Great Escape this March. Billy Woods appeared on the album Haram as part of the duo Armand Hammer with Elucid, while MIKE teamed up with Al and Wiki late last year for the EP One More.

Of course, Earl has perhaps the most storied history with Alchemist; they infamously released a “secret album” to YouTube under a fake name and supposedly have another with Vince Staples recorded, although there appears to be some disagreement on its existence even among themselves.

In any case, Flying High is due 6/30 via Alchemist’s own ALC Records.