Last week, Compton crooner Steve Lacy managed to overtake Harry Styles to take the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Lacy’s surprise hit, “Bad Habit,” dethroned Styles’ record-breaking hit “As It Was,” with Sam Smith & Kim Petras’ “Unholy” coming in third place. This week, though “Unholy” rose one position to take second place and leave “As It Was” in third, Lacy fended off the two pop stars to hold onto the top spot for the second week in a row.
The Billboard #Hot100 top 10 (chart dated Oct. 15, 2022)
Considering that “Bad Habit” has been labeled an R&B/Soul song, the feat is even more impressive as the genre hasn’t traditionally been all that successful in the history of Hot 100 chart. Even more impressively, the song’s narrative is explicitly queer, which makes it something of an outlier within the R&B genre. The track’s success was largely driven by TikTok, soundtracking thousands of videos on the platform and spiking the sort of curiosity that drives engagement on traditional DSPs.
According to Billboard.com, “Bad Habits” pulled in 20.6 million streams and 2,000 downloads in the past week, as well as 41.5 million radio airplay audience impressions, a 7% increase from the week before. The album on which it appears, Gemini Rights, was Lacy’s first top 10, peaking at No. 7 on the Billboard 200.
When we think about the era of American slavery, many of us tend to think of it as the far distant past. While slavery doesn’t exist as a formal institution today, there are people living who knew formerly enslaved black Americans first-hand. In the wide arc of history, the legal enslavement of people on U.S. soil is a recent occurrence—so recent, in fact, that we have voice recordings of interviews with people who lived it.
Many of us have read written accounts of enslavement, from Frederick Douglass’s autobiography to some of the 2,300 first-person accounts housed in the Library of Congress. But how many of us have heard the actual voices of people who were enslaved telling their own stories?
ABC News’ Nightline with Ted Koppel aired a segment in 1999 in which we can hear the first-person accounts of people who had been enslaved taken from interviews conducted in the 1930s and 40s (also housed in the Library of Congress). They include the voice of a man named Fountain Hughes, who was born into slavery in 1848 and whose grandfather had “belonged to” Thomas Jefferson.
As Koppel says in the segment, “The results of these digitally enhanced recordings are arresting, almost unbelievable. The idea of hearing the voices of actual slaves from the plantations of the Old South is as powerful—as startling, really—as if you could hear Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee speak.”
Indeed, hearing formerly enslaved people share their experiences of being bought and sold like cattle, sleeping on bare pallets, and witnessing whippings for insubordination is a heartbreaking reminder of how close we are to this ugly chapter of our history. The segment is well worth ten minutes to watch:
Double H Canine Academy in Louisville, Kentucky is a place where dog owners can take their rambunctious pets and have them turned into respectable members of the family.
However, as you can tell in this hilarious video, not all dogs are meant to follow orders.
As you can see below, Ryker is living his life to the fullest. While he may never be the world’s greatest service dog, he continues to provide an invaluable testament to being true to one’s self.
On most days, I’m a Lay’s guy. I’ll take some Lay’s Classics with a fresh squeeze of lime over any flavor Pringle, Frito, Flamin’ Hot whatever the f*ck, Cheeto, tortilla chip, or Dorito. Lay’s are, as far as I’m concerned, the next best side snack to french fries. But some days, when I feel like going a little wild, I’ll grab a bag of Kettle Brand chips and crunch on them ’til my mouth is raw.
Kettle Brand and Lay’s couldn’t be more different. Lay’s are light and crispy, almost paper thin, but Kettle Brand delivers the texture. Kettle chips have more bite, they’re more satisfying, and because they’re much thicker and crunchier, they tend to hold flavors much better than the lighter potato chips out there. The brand also has a tendency to favor premium ingredients, making each flavor an experience in and of itself, unlike say, Doritos, which has too many flavors that taste totally redundant (I know, I’ve ranked them all).
What makes Kettle chips special more than anything is that they are fried in a hot kettle of oil and that makes all the difference. Instead of simply being crispy, this results in an almost caramelized quality that makes the flavors come across as richer, deeper, and more complex. It’s an upmarket chip, not always great for dipping but often excellent on its own.
To help you find the Kettle chips worthy of your pantry space, we decided to rank every single flavor we could get our hands on. Here is the verdict!
Why? Light salt I can understand, but totally naked kettle-fried potato chips?
These taste like nothing and anyone who tells you they’re in the least bit enjoyable is lying to you. There is the slightest hint of sweetness, but mostly it tastes like you’re eating stale dried potato.
The Bottom Line:
Skip this flavor unless you literally can’t have anything else. Like if you have gout or something. And even then, there has got to be something better to snack on.
The “and sea salt”’ of this flavor might as well not exist because all you’re going to taste here is that truffle oil. It has strong savory umami notes, but I think this chip is a little too overwhelming to rank any higher for me. With the right sort of dip I can see this tasting really rich and delicious, but on its own, it’s just too much and hovers a bit too close to tasting rotten.
The Bottom Line:
It should taste great with the right dip, but on its own, it’s way too overwhelming unless you’re in love with that truffle oil flavor.
Sour Cream & Onion is a staple flavor of potato chips, and while these are delicious, I don’t think this flavor translates that well to the kettle chip form. The caramelized sweetness that comes with the batch-cooked kettle fried process clashes with the tangy flavor profile of this combination of sour cream and onion. It’s not as sharp and intense as this flavor typically is, it’s a lot more subtle which may or may not be what you want.
The Bottom Line:
We want more of a tangy bite, this misses the mark a bit.
As I mentioned in the lede, I love Lay’s Classic, which is one of the simplest potato chips on the market. You’d think that would mean I have a preference for simple potato chips, but where I’ve ranked Kettle’s similar Sea Salt flavor proves that that isn’t really the case. This flavor is just fine, it’s salty, slightly sweet, and has a nice thick texture but Kettle Brand makes a lot of different variations on Sea Salt, all of which are much more enjoyable to eat than this one.
The Bottom Line:
It’s simple, salty, and sweet, but Kettle offers a few flavors that add a single ingredient or two and better utilize sea salt.
Don’t let Honey Dijon landing near the bottom of this list read as a bad thing — we’ve now reached Kettle Brand’s first truly great flavor of this ranking. The Honey Dijon is incredibly tasty, with sweet honey notes on the nose and a flavor profile that brings you through all sorts of nuanced earthy flavors.
The chip starts off sweet before settling into an earthier bitterness, snapping into a floral-backed tang, and a lingering sweet aftertaste. It’s a journey of flavors that never gets boring.
The Bottom Line:
Sweet, tangy, earthy, and then sweet again. Honey Dijon offers shifting flavors that are a joy to taste.
Dill Pickle feels a little redundant, it relies heavily on vinegar and garlic, two ingredients that show up in so many different Kettle flavors. But while Dill Pickle feels repetitive, it’s also a little too delicious to rank any lower. The initial flavor is mostly indebted to spicy garlic and tangy vinegar, but there is an earthy pickle-backed bitterness at the end that makes this chip incredibly addicting.
Like the Truffle Oil flavor, this one needs a dip to truly shine, but it’s delicious enough on its own that even without a dip, it’s still pretty damn good.
The Bottom Line:
They mostly taste like garlic and vinegar, but if you like pickles the aftertaste here is really going to satisfy you in a way the other flavors won’t.
The Seal Salt flavor was bland and boring but the Sea Salt & Vinegar adds that one extra ingredient that makes this flavor really work. There is so much to offer here, it’s sweet and salty, with a savory finish that soaks into the tongue and the perfect thick texture.
There is something so satisfying about the way this flavor works with the crunch of the chip, it tastes like it should be Kettle Brand’s default flavor, like they could just call it “Kettle Brand Classic.” It’s the foundation that some of the higher-ranked flavors are built from.
The Bottom Line:
If you’ve never tried Kettle Brand and you want to know what it’s all about, start here.
New York Cheddar is f*cking awesome. This is truly one of the best-tasting cheddar flavored chips you’re going to find on the market. It doesn’t taste overly cheesy, salty, or artificial — like Cheddar Ruffles or Cheetos. Instead, you get a nice sharp kick, a little sweetness, and a mix of the natural nutty qualities of cheddar, and a bit of sour cream tang.
The Bottom Line:
The best cheddar-flavored chips on the market, no contest.
This was a tough one to rank because Kettle Brand makes three different BBQ-flavored chips, and they’re all pretty delicious. Backyard BBQ is my least favorite of the three. This chip hits you with an initial sweetness that turns smokey and leaves a subtle burn of garlic and onion flavors at the aftertaste.
It’s incredibly fragrant, and it lends itself well to the thick texture of this crunchy chip.
The Bottom Line:
Truly a smokey and savory delight. One of the best BBQ potato chips on the market, but far from Kettle Brand’s best.
Look, I know Salt & Pepper is ranked way too high on this list, but I don’t care, it’s my ranking, and I f*cking love this flavor. It’s my go-to! It might seem simple, but it should actually be called “Salt, Pepper, & Onion” because this flavor has a distinct sharp onion flavor at the finish that makes it incredibly savory and addictive.
The initial salt and pepper flavors are really nice too, big flakes of black pepper dot every chip, offering fragrant and earthy peppercorn notes that help to elevate this chip very close to being as good as a fresh piping hot order of well-seasoned French fries.
The Bottom Line:
The only potato chip flavor that could stand in as a substitute for an order of fries. Eat it with a burger and you’ll be amazed at how little you miss the French fries.
Far smokier than the Backyard BBQ, the Bourbon BBQ hits you with that same initial sweetness but features a tangier flavor with more pronounced smokey notes. I’m getting a bit of paprika here with some rich dark sweetness that sort of approximates bourbon, but not exactly.
Here is the thing about the Kettle Brand Pepperoncini, it doesn’t taste anything like actual pepperoncini chili peppers. It doesn’t have that bright spicy sweetness, but, don’t let that bother you because name aside, this flavor is delicious. It’s very vegetal, with a green bell pepper-esque flavor that starts sweet, shifts into tangy territory, and ends with a garlicky aftertaste.
The Bottom Line:
The Pepperoncini doesn’t exactly taste like pepperoncini, but it’s still deliciously vegetal and fresh tasting, and who could hate that?
Like the New York Cheddar, Kettle Brands absolutely nails ranch-flavored chips, no contest. In a ranking of ranch chips, I’m positive Farmstead Ranch would come up on top. This chip has a healthy dusting of dried ranch powder all over each chip, offering a satisfying buttermilk-indebted flavor.
It has a nice balance of salty, garlicky, and sweet flavors that taste akin to dipping your chip into actual ranch dressing. Yes, it’s that good!
The Bottom Line:
Hands down one of the best ranch-flavored chips you’ll ever eat. It tastes remarkably natural and will satisfy if a bottle of real ranch isn’t handy.
I have to give it to Kettle Brand, they somehow made three different BBQ flavors that all taste distinctively different, but their best is easily the Korean BBQ. Unlike the Backyard and Bourbon BBQ, this Korean BBQ puts less emphasis on smokey flavors and ups the sweetness to a considerable degree.
The resulting flavor is a perfect blend between dark molasses sweetness and savory sweet onion with the slightest hint of smokey notes on the backend.
The Bottom Line:
Kettle Brand’s best BBQ flavor and easily one of the best BBQ chips on the market.
Here it is, Kettle Brand’s best flavor by a mile. Spicy chips are all the rage — just look at the success of Flamin’ Hot! — but while those chips deliver the heat, they tend to lack in flavor, coming across as grossly artificial. These jalapeño chips take an opposite approach, offering a more subtle and natural take on spice.
It’s not hot enough to burn your tongue or make you sweat, but what this flavor lacks in heat, it makes up for in taste. At first, you’ll be hit with an initial sweetness followed by some bright vegetal notes with a strong hint of garlic. After the first couple of chips, you’re going to wonder where the heat is but after about four or five the spice starts to accumulate in the back of the throat, growing hotter and hotter with each chip. That makes eating these chips incredibly addicting — as you start to chase the heat you’ll likely find yourself pouring yourself another serving whether you’re hungry or not.
If that’s not the sign of a truly great chip, I don’t know what is.
The Bottom Line:
A natural approach to spicy chips, Kettle Brand’s Jalapeño is the most elevated and complex spicy chip you’ll ever eat. Your move, Flamin’ Hot.
Two of Argentina’s rising stars have teamed up for a new collaboration. On Friday (October 7), Truenoreleased the music video for his “Hood” remix featuring Tiago PZK.
In the past year, Trueno has emerged as a revelation in the Latin rap scene. Back in May, Gorillaz brought him out as a special guest during the band’s Quilmes Rock concert, with Trueno performing a new freestyle rap over “Clint Eastwood.” Last month, he was featured in NPR’s Tiny Desk spin-off El Tiny for Latinx Heritage Month.
Meanwhile, Tiago PZK has also become an artist on the rise from Argentina. Though he was a part of the country’s Latin trap wave, he has since embraced other genres like R&B and alternative influences on his album Portales, which was released in July. Tiago PZK scored one of the biggest hits of the year with the “Entre Nosotros” remix featuring fellow Argentine acts Lit Killah, María Becerra, and Nicki Nicole. Their collaboration has amassed over 170 million streams on Spotify.
The “Hood” remix marks the second collaboration between Trueno and Tiago PZK. The song was first released on Trueno’s breakthrough album Bien O Mal in May. Tiago PZK’s soulful voice sound at home on Trueno’s heartfelt ballad. Its perfectly rounded out by Trueno’s chill rap flow. The two artists trade verses about returning home and finding out how life has changed since they left. Trueno and Tiago PZK bring the nostalgia of the remix to life in the video as they sing together in front of a rising sun.
Trueno is nominated for Best Rap/Hip-Hop Song for “Dance Crip” at the 2022 Latin Grammy Awards. In November, Tiago PZK’s Portales Tour will visit venues in Brooklyn and LA.
Tiago PZK is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Speaking of singing though, that’s exactly how Kacey Musgraves chose to make her feelings about Cruz heard while on stage at the Austin City Limits music festival this past weekend. Tweaking the lyrics to one of her songs was the perfect way to describe Cruz and his never-ending buffoonery.
During Musgraves’ performance of her hit “High Horse,” in the middle of her Sunday night set at the festival, she added a jab at Cruz in the lyrics. She sang: “‘Cause everyone knows someone who kills the buzz, every time they open up their mouth… Ted Cruz.” And as the crowd roars, she replies, “I said what I said,” before not skipping a beat on the rest of the tune.
A Texas native herself, Musgraves made and sold shirts last year that said “Cruzin For Bruzin’,” while donating the proceeds to homeless immigrants and Texans affected by power-outage-causing storms.
All proceeds will directly support Texans affected by the storm and also to homeless immigrants seeking shelter and food. https://t.co/L6CW0YAGV7 Available thru Sunday!
Every once in a while, Hollywood likes to put an older actor with a younger actor in a project just to see what happens. Sometimes it works! Most of the time, it really does not work. This was the case for the now-disgraced film Dirty Grandpa which many have described as the “worst movie ever made.” It’s just surprising that the worst film of all time featured some of the greatest actors, including the unlikely duo Robert De Niro and Aubrey Plaza.
“I didn’t really have a relationship with him off camera because he’s him,” Plaza said of the veteran actor. “I didn’t have time to get to know him, he shows up in a puff of smoke and there’s no chatting at the water cooler.”Dirty Grandpa starred De Niro and Zac Efron as a grandpa/grandson duo who travel to spring break in Florida. Due to their very little time together, Plaza explained that she and De Niro got off on the wrong foot after they met on set.
“By the time he’d show up, I’m in character. My character had one goal: To have sex with him,” Plaza explains. “I was acting totally insane as the character because we were about to shoot. I don’t think he understood that wasn’t me. You’d think he would because he’s an actor and an amazing one.” After shooting, Plaza showed up to a lunch hosted by De Niro, where he didn’t even recognize her out of character. According to the actress, De Niro was ” a little freaked out” about the film. “I showed up and he’s like, ‘Who are you sweetheart?’ and after that he was normal. At first, I think I came on really strong. I did some questionable things I wouldn’t do anymore.”
Despite doing horribly at the box office, Plaza said she learned a very valuable lesson when it comes to being “normal” around some Hollywood legends. “The worst thing you can do at improv is plan a joke. So talk shows short circuit my brain. Planning a story or a joke feels so wrong to me.”
Plaza has been known for nearly a decade as the “weird girl” character trope, but she says it isn’t on purpose and something she is working on. “Every time I tell myself just be normal this time. Do it and get out. I see Tom Hanks doing it and I’m like, ‘He’s smiling, he’s doing great.’ I’d rather have an uncomfortable time because it feels more real, but it’s not on purpose. I wouldn’t want to make someone feel uncomfortable. It’s my defense mechanism put on display. I try to do it right every time and f*ck it up every time.” This is why we should always look to model citizen Tom Hanks for help! Well, not always. But often!
Brad Pitt and award-winning French producer Damien Quintard are officially reopening Miraval Studios this month. The duo’s plan to renovate and reopen the famed studio located at the Château Miraval in Correns, France, was announced in December. Pitt and Quintard graced the newest cover of Billboard to commemorate the occasion, and Sade fans will want to read it.
The cover story written by Lyndsey Havens confirms Sade “was the first artist to record at the reopened Miraval,” with Pitt calling the four-time Grammy winner and R&B legend “royalty.”
“You could feel the love that she and the band had for this place,” Quintard added. “And when we talked to musicians who came here previously, they all have this special connection with Miraval that can’t really be explained. […] It’s a dream come true to see this place activate again.”
Whatever Sade recorded at Miraval will appear on her forthcoming project, according to a press release, which will mark her first new solo album since 2010’s Soldier Of Love. This month also marks the 30th anniversary of Love Deluxe, her fourth studio album.
Miraval was founded in 1977 by French composer Jacques Loussier, then-owner of the Château Miraval estate that Pitt has frequented since 2008 and co-purchased in 2012 with his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie.
Loussier intended what was then known as Studio Miraval for his own use, but Sade was among artists attracted to the space for their sessions. Other notable artists to have recorded there during its heyday were AC/DC, Pink Floyd, The Cure, and The Cranberries.
If you’ve ever lost “most” of your money in a Ponzi scheme, you’ve automatically won Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
The actor has made millions throughout his long acting career, but he and wife Kyra Sedgwick were scammed by Bernie Madoff’s infamous Ponzi scheme that cost investors $50 billion. Madoff’s investment scheme, of course, impacted lots of investors, not to mention nearly bankrupted the New York Mets. And it also impacted Bacon, who said in a new interview that he lost “most” of his money when things went belly-up.
Bacon had disclosed the losses previously, saying in a 2017 interview with The Guardian that the losses were “a bad day” but he and his family “got through it together.” But appearing on the SmartLess podcast hosted by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes, Bacon went into greater detail, admitting the severity of the losses and the “life lessons” that come from believing something that’s simply too good to be true.
“There’s obvious life lessons there. You know, if something is too good to be true, it’s too good to be true,” Bacon said on the SmartLess podcast, according to The Wrap. “And when something like that happens, you know, you look at each other, then you go, ‘Well, that sucks. Let’s, roll up our sleeves and get to work,’ you know?”
Despite the setback, Bacon seems to have a good perspective on the losses and how it could have been much worse. Bacon and Sedgwick have continued to act and rebuild their life, and he said there are plenty of Madoff’s victims who were in much worse shape when the scheme came crashing down.
The actor went on to express gratitude for his family, wife and career. “We’ve made it this far. Our kids are healthy. We’re healthy. We can still both work and certainly, you get angry and stuff, but I have to say that there were a lot of people who were much worse off than we were,” Bacon continued.
“Old people, people whose retirement funds were completely decimated. So there’s always gonna be somebody that’s gonna have it a lot worse than you,” he added. “Whatever the cliches … Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Bacon said.
Bacon did say that he managed to get “a portion of some money back” from the ordeal, but it’s another reminder to be careful who to trust with your hard-earned dollars if you can manage to invest some of it.
Kanye West’s “White Lives Matter” shirts are still drawing attention and reactions from fans and famous people alike — which, when you think about it, was probably the point all along. While many celebrities spoke out against the shirts’ messaging, others seemed baffled by the backlash against them, including Sharon Osbourne, who told TMZ, “I don’t understand why white lives don’t matter. I don’t understand it. It’s not my culture. Everybody matters, don’t they?… I don’t know what his point is.”
And while she didn’t totally seem to understand why the statement is so offensive — despite many, many easily accessible breakdowns such as this one (although to be fair, it doesn’t seem she even knew what the TMZ reporter was on about and that reporter did a piss-poor job of explaining it) — she did agree with Kanye that the Black Lives Matter organization that cropped up in the wake of highly publicized murders of Black Americans (especially by police) was “a scam.” “We gave $900,000 to that and I’d like my money back. Wish he could have said that before.” However, she did have a suggestion for anyone who doesn’t like Kanye’s antics: “Don’t go to his social media. Don’t listen to his music. Leave the guy alone… If you don’t like him, do that.”
Sharon Osbourne says she doesn’t understand why people are outraged by Kanye West’s ‘White Lives Matter’ shirt:
“I don’t understand why white lives don’t matter. I don’t understand it. It’s not my culture. Everybody matters, don’t they?” pic.twitter.com/X3XlYAzoI8
Her advice is pretty funny, considering that’s effectively what the so-called “cancel culture” she decries during the interview is even about, but also apt. At this point, the only way to stop Kanye is to stop giving Kanye what he wants: attention. And before any smart alecks chime in; the day people stop clicking every single post about him to leave snarky comments is the day most outlets stop writing about him. In the meantime, he’ll remain a topic of discussion even as his new buddies at Fox Nex deplore his latest malapropism.
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