Category: Viral

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE – The time has come to get silly

There are a lot of good shows clanging around right now. The Bear is getting people all riled up and reminding me what it was like to work in a kitchen for one summer. Stranger Things is dropping mammoth episodes that reveal mammoth plot details. Better Call Saul is about to return for its final clump of episodes. It’s an embarrassment of riches. It is also all very stressful. Especially The Bear. I’m still a few episodes behind on that because it might be the least binge-y show I’ve seen in years. Good, yes, sure, but two straight episodes of it and I’m ready to smoke a cigarette for the first time since college. It’s not ideal.

Luckily, there are alternatives on the way. Good, fun, silly shows that will lower your bubbling anxiety level. Shows with wonderful vibes and goofs for the sake of goofs and the right kind of energy to watch at night while you are winding down and don’t want to chew your fingernails into useless little nubbies. Shows that both return for new seasons this month. The first of these is What We Do in the Shadows, which is back on Tuesday.

We have talked about this show many times, with good reason. It’s a delightfully little program. We’ve got vampires living on Staten Island and getting into little adventures and sometimes going on the run in character as regular human bartenders named Jackie Daytona. It’s smart and stupid and maybe the most purely funny show anywhere right now. I don’t say that lightly. This is a show that has Matt Berry and his tremendous voice and uses both of them to say things like this.

It’s a good show. In the new season, one of the characters, an “energy vampire” named Colin Robinson who derives his power by sucking the life out of people through boredom, has recently died and a smaller, more childlike version of him has burst out of his lifeless body. So there’s a toddler on the show now. With an adult’s face. It’s a whole thing.

Speaking of whole things that are weird and fun and cool, the Harley Quinn cartoon is back later this month for a third season.

This is another one we’ve talked about before, a few times, because it’s good. Better than it should be, honestly. It’s profane and silly and surprisingly sweet at times, especially with the relationship between Harley and Poison Ivy, who, by the end of season two, have become a couple. The voice cast is incredible. Kaley Cuoco, Lake Bell, Tony Hale, James Adomian, etc etc etc. My favorite is Christopher Meloni as a kind of depressed Commissioner Gordon who sometimes plays with the Bat Signal because he needs someone to talk to.

Again, it’s good. Both shows are good. You should definitely watch them both. You have enough time to binge the first two seasons of Harley if you haven’t seen it yet. You don’t have time to catch up on Shadows before the premiere (unless you don’t sleep, which you should not do), but if you haven’t gotten in there yet, there’s no time like the present to start. Go ahead. Relax. Have some fun. It is July and it’s too hot to be stressed out over television.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Meanwhile, across the pond

Something very important happened in England this week. No, not the thing about Boris Johnson resigning as Prime Minister. I mean, kind of that, but not really that. We have important business to get to here. Specifically, we have the thing in tweet up there to get to. The thing where, as the British news was reporting on the resignation of Boris Johnson live from London, someone was blasting “Yakety Sax” from The Benny Hill Show.

This is… funny. It’s really funny. One of the funnier things I’ve ever seen, maybe. And very British. Just absurdly British. I spent the better part of 20 minutes today trying to come up with the American equivalent of this — an impossible task, due to a number of reasons including, but not limited to, people who know things about it using actual phrases like “activate the Queen” — and the closest I came was “the President resigns and someone shows up on the White House lawn with a boombox that is blasting the music from Jackass.” Not perfect, but close.

And it gets better. A lot better. Because once you get past the part where this actually was a thing that happened, you are naturally going to, like, why and how it happened. And then you, like me, will look into it. And then you’ll discover that the song was played by a political activist who was put up to it all by Hugh Grant. Yes, that Hugh Grant. And he did it via tweet. Look at this.

So, to recap, we have:

• The Prime Minister of England resigned in disgrace
• The Queen being activated
• The whole thing being set to the Benny Hill music
• Hugh Grant being a naughty boy online

This is easily the most British thing I’ve ever seen. And one of the best. Every single layer that unfolded was better than the last. I really did not ever expect to be this interested in British politics. Here I am, though. I don’t even know where else it can go from this point. Maybe there’s a clause that makes Jason Statham the new Prime Minister. Or the king. That would be cool. And funny. I would like it a lot.

Here’s the main takeaway from all of this, whatever it is.

Accurate. This has been a helpful and informative chat about global relations. Now, moving to more important matters…

ITEM NUMBER THREE – I need new pictures from the set of Barbie every day, please and thank you

Here’s the thing about the upcoming Barbie movie: I love it. Which is weird. It’s a little weird. It’s not, in theory, a movie narrowly tailored to my target demo, and it’s not, in theory, something that would be able to cut through the noise just from a series of paparazzi photos from the set. And yet! We all have plenty to consider here.

Part of it is the talent involved. We’ve got Greta Gerwig behind the camera and everyone from Margot Robbie to Ryan Gosling to Will Ferrell in front of it. It’s an embarrassment of riches, really, and the least you can do if you’re trying to cash in on a children’s toy with a big-budget film (see also, The LEGO Movie, also starring Will Ferrell), so there’s all of that. But mostly, if we’re being honest, and why would we lie about this, it’s the photos. They’re good photos.

My colleague Josh Kurp wrote about all of this more eloquently than I suspect I can, so let me just link to the thing he wrote and post another picture.

It’s perfect. Look at… well, look at all of it. The colors and the rollerblades and the pretty people in colors and rollerblades. It’s all so good that it has temporarily made me forget to be angry about the thing where Ryan Gosling is funny and charming and talented and literally looks like a Ken doll so much that they cast him as a Ken doll. It’s too much. Come on, buddy. Share with the rest of us a little bit. It’s tough out here.

All of which is to say, yes, again, I’m excited, to the point that I’m already dreading the moment where I have to ask some poor theater employee for a ticket to it while both of us make the faces you’re picturing now. It’s really going to be hard to improve on any of it. I mean, I don’t even see how you c-…

Okay. Fine. Yes. This is a movie I would watch. Let Barbie and Paddington get married and live in a castle. They can be the new king and queen of England. This will solve a lot of our problems.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – Oh, look, it’s my new favorite shows

This is a trailer for an upcoming television show called The Resort. It looks so good. I want it now. Here’s the description in its most basic form…

Noah and Emma are vacationing in the Mayan Riviera at the Oceana Vista Resort for their 10th anniversary. Noah has been content with life, whereas Emma feels like their marriage isn’t advancing. They are then pulled into an unsolved mystery of two missing persons from fifteen years ago, which tests the resolve of their marriage.

… and here’s a list of people who are in it: Cristin Milioti, William Jackson Harper, Nick Offerman, Skyler Gisondo. That is a really good list of people with really good resumes. We’ve got alums of The Good Place and Parks & Rec and a current star of The Righteous Gemstones and freaking Cristin Milioti, who is great in everything, but especially in Palm Springs. Remember how good Palm Springs was? Go watch it again this weekend if you don’t. It’s on Hulu. You won’t regret it even a little.

In fact, now that I think about it… this show feels like it has a Palm Springs kind of vibe. Maybe with a little Lodge 49 thrown in. Lodge 49 was so good. God, that was such a good show. I wonder why The Resort is giving me all the good vibes from television shows and movies I like. Let’s head over to IMDb and check out some of the credits for its showrunner, Andy Siara, who is co-producing w-… aaaaaaand he wrote Palm Springs and was a writer on Lodge 49.

It’s nice when things make sense. We are definitely watching that show. And we are watching this one, too. Probably.

This show looks so strange. I am either going to love it or bail after 1.5 episodes because I am cringing so hard it is grinding my bones to dust. This is the thing about Nathan Fielder. He’s both a genius and maniac, in a way that can legitimately unsettle me sometimes. I don’t know. I have trouble putting it all into words. Luckily, the good folks at Vulture put it into words for me in this long profile of him and the new show.

As the series progresses, the line between Fielder’s life and work blurs, until he finds himself at the center of his own experiment. At times, he seems to question the wisdom of manipulating people the way he does. When the teacher likens him to Willy Wonka, he looks disturbed. “Isn’t he the bad guy?” he asks. As the credits roll, we hear the eerie tinkling of a celesta, the swell of strings, and then Gene Wilder’s voice, soft as cotton candy. To engineer a moment of intimacy with the teacher, he takes him to a heated pool. Hoping to get the guy to open up, he says he was once married. The teacher begins talking about the pain of his own divorce, but a moment later, the conversation ends. “I didn’t want to go too deep into my private life,” Fielder explains in voice-over, “so I had preplanned for an elderly swimmer to interrupt us.” The Fielder who appears in these scenes is not unlike the real Fielder. “You’re seeing me control and not wanting to share,” he told me. “I’m aware that I’m like that, and so it’s in the show.”

Yeah. Like I said, I’m either going to adore this show or watch it through the fingers that are over my eyes for a week or two and then go watch Palm Springs again instead. A fascinating conundrum we have on our hands here.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Let Joe Pera have a show

I have terrible news. Joe Pera Talks With You, the nicest show on television, one that was unlike anything else anywhere, one that was somehow heartfelt and chaotic and peaceful all at once, was canceled by Adult Swim after three seasons. Pera announced the news in a typically lovely note on his own website, which briefly crashed under the weight of the sudden traffic to it, which is kind of perfect and something that would have made a great episode of the show. If it hadn’t been canceled. I’m sad again.

Let’s just blockquote Joe.

It was the best when I’d meet someone after a show and they’d mention they watched the Christmas Tree Special every December, or tell me that the sleep episodes actually work, or that they showed the series to their Dad and at first he hated it but now they watch it together regularly.

I thought about that as I ate my chicken sandwich and fries. I also thought about how we were really just getting going. This winter I spent three weeks in Marquette doing research (also drinking beer) and was filled with new ideas. But mostly, it’s a shame that the characters’ stories can’t continue. I knew where things were headed but I won’t say here cause part of me is holding out hope that sometime down the line we can film a proper ending for Joe, Sarah, the Melskys, Gene, Lulu, and most importantly, Fred the Sample Guy.

We had an idea where Fred starts a ‘Regret Club’ where people are encouraged to come and share things they regret most in their lives under the pretense that the club will help them find some resolution but Fred hasn’t planned that far ahead and everyone just gets pissed off at him.

At the same time, I thought about how lucky we were. The more I learn how TV works, the more I realize that it’s kind of a miracle that our quiet, 11-minute show about rocks, beans, grocery stores, and breakfast crews got on the air and lasted as long as it did.

I hate this. It feels strange to say in a world where there are 50,000 shows on 500 channels and/or streaming sites, but there are really so few original things happening out there. This show was one of them. It moved at its own pace in such an oddly confident way. Like, there was a whole episode about just going to the grocery store. There was a whole season where the main unifying story was “Joe builds a bean arch.” Watch the video embedded at the top of this section. It’s just Joe Pera talking to you and helping you get to sleep. It sounds like the most boring thing ever when you just type it out like this. But it worked. It was kind of incredible.

I’m really bummed out about this one. I’m sure everyone involved will land on their feet, if only because everyone involved was talented enough to pull this one off. But still. It stinks to lose something that was legitimately unique. There are enough outlets around that something like this should just be allowed to exist.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Phil:

I was driving to drop my son off at his friend’s house yesterday and we drove past a homemade sign for a little lawn and garden business that was stapled to a lightpole that said “PAUL LANDSCAPING.” Before I had even processed any of it, I said “good fake name” out loud under my breath. This is your influence at work.

Oh god. Oh, Phil. Phil, I am so sorry. Actually… wait. I’m not really sorry. I’m howling with laughter. I do feel a little bad that my stupid love of dumb fake names has infiltrated your brain, but mostly I’m happy. PAUL LANDSCAPING. I can picture him now. He has a mustache and a safari hat and he’s strutting through the produce section of the fancy supermarket in the area that’s not Whole Foods but is kind of Whole Foods. He has lots of opinions about bell peppers.

Anyway, if you’re wondering if this is just a bit on my part, that maybe I’m all talk and not really committed to the fake name lifestyle, please know that I ended up on a detour due to construction last weekend and saw this sign and immediately whipped my handicap-accessible minivan off the road and into the parking lot so I could take this picture and make this joke.

I do not regret any of it.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Nebraska!

Three semi-trailers full of meat products were stolen this weekend in Grand Island and the thefts may be part of a nationwide trend.

MEAT HEIST

MULTIPLE MEAT HEISTS

NATIONWIDE MEAT HEIST EPIDEMIC

“It does not look like it was possible for a single person to conduct these thefts. Most likely it was a minimum of two people or more and then on top of that we have a similar thefts of meat products in other areas such as Colfax County and Omaha over the past several weeks that are probably related,” Grand Island Police Captain Jim Duering said.

Two things are important to note here:

• In the original Fast & Furious movie, Dominic Toretto and company were operating as a team to steal DVD players from trucks that were driving down the highway
• It would be extremely funny to me if the next movie — the tenth, one after they went to space and two after a cyberterrorist played by Academy Award winner Charlize Theron tried to steal a nuclear submarine — took them back to basics for a meat heist

Vin. Please. If you’re reading this. Please. For me. Meat heist. Vin.

The Nebraska State Patrol found the two tractors and two of the trailers outside Grand Island city limits. The trailers were empty. One of the tractors was found Sunday in Lancaster County. The third trailer, which reportedly contains $232,666 worth of beef from JBS Swift, was still missing as of Monday morning.

“We think it’s probably the same crew who made two trips and took the meat into two different locations. At some point you can’t unload 160,000 pounds of meat without having another truck available. If those were stolen or not, we don’t know,” Duering said.

This is the only thing I care about now. Imagine the amount of work that went into this. Imagine the layers of planning. To steal meat. Not a Picasso, not a priceless diamond. Meat. I will never get over this.

“The first tractor and trailer that was taken had a little over $232,000 worth of meat. If you look at the cost of beef right now it can be anywhere between $200,000 to $1 million depending on what meat cut was on board at the time.”

MILLION-DOLLAR MEAT HEIST

If that’s not the title of some straight-to-VOD movie starring like the third lead from a lesser CSI spinoff by next summer, I am going to be so angry at everyone.

Now that Thor: Love and Thunder has rumbled into theaters, Marvel fans are blowing up social media with their reactions to the film. While the reviews have been mixed for the fourth installment in the Thor franchise, there’s been a steady common denominator with both viewers and critics: Christian Bale absolutely nails his performance as Gorr the God Butcher.

First introduced in 2012’s Thor: God of Thunder by writer Jason Aaron, Gorr is a terrifying threat who goes on god-killing spree across space and time that is like nothing Thor has ever faced before. For his live-action portrayal, Bale hews closely to the character’s almost colorless look while tossing in influences from Nosferatu to Aphex Twin. (There was talk of giving the character a Kate Bush dance number, but it never made into the film.) The actor also had to work with extremely long nails that apparently were the hardest part of his villainous transformation. Bale has drastically altered his body for roles, but throw long nails on him, and he has no idea what to do.

Despite being buried underneath a considerable amount of make-up, prosthetics, and black ooze, Bale delivered one heck of a performance that Marvel fans have been praising on social media since the film opened on Thursday night. In fact, Bale is so good that they wish there was more of him in Love and Thunder, which clocks in as one of the shortest MCU movies.

You can see just a small tase of the praise for Bale’s performance below:

Thor: Love and Thunder is now playing in theaters.

The American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament will take place this weekend in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The tournament usually quite entertaining, as a bunch of celebs do funny stuff while also scratching their competitive itch. There is one constant through all of this: Charles Barkley shows up, competes, and does not do particularly well.

But things might be different this year. Tony Romo, the favorite to win the whole thing, said that Barkley “hit the ball really well” during a driving range session and would bet on a finish in the top-70 of the 87-player field. According to David Purdum of ESPN, Las Vegas agrees, and bettors have been pouring money onto a good finish for the Inside the NBA stalwart.

Caesars Sportsbook opened Barkley as a 5-1 underdog to finish in the top 70. As of Thursday, Barkley’s odds had improved to +260, with 96% of the bets on 95% of the money wagered backing the NBA Hall of Famer to finish in the top 70.

There is, however, one person who very strongly disagrees: Wardell Stephen Curry II, who told the press that he is far less confident in a good finish for Chuck.

“No, hell no,” Curry said. “Clip that, send it to him, let him play it on every tee box. There’s no way he’s doing it. As much faith as Chuck has had in the Warriors and jump shooting teams winning championships, that’s the amount of faith I have in him hitting the top-70.”

Barkley finished 76th at the event last year. Curry finished in first place in NBA Finals MVP voting recently as the Golden State Warriors beat the Boston Celtics to win their fourth championship in the last eight years.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Life as Brent Faiyaz knew it changed by the time summer arrived in 2017. His guest appearance on GoldLink’s “Crew” with Shy Glizzy, which dropped in December 2016, shot him into the spotlight thanks to the perfect hook he provided for the song. While that record is certainly the most impactful towards his upward trajectory, there’s another one that came out two months prior that best speaks to the man we hear today. Sonder, Brent Faiyaz’s group with producers Dpat and Atu, released a record called “Too Fast” which Brent uses to respond to those who “​​say I drive too fast, move too fast, live too fast.” Little did we know this line would foreshadow Brent’s demise a half-decade later.

Brent Faiyaz’s sophomore album, Wasteland, expands on the message from “Too Fast.” Throughout the album’s 19 songs, which include features from big names like Tyler The Creator, Drake, and Alicia Keys as well as fellow Marylanders Joony and Tre’Amani, an all-gas-no-breaks lifestyle is not the only thing that Brent defends. He also critiques the “toxic” label that’s been placed on him, especially after the 2020 release of his F*ck The World EP. “That’s the Internet word that people like to attach to sh*t” and “So if you sing some real sh*t, like what’s toxic? What’s real?” he says to open Wasteland on “Villian’s Theme.” For Brent, his songs detail a very real lifestyle that isn’t some false persona or game of pretend to play into a trend. Brent isn’t being anything, he just is it, and to him, there’s a difference between the two.

As the non-linear and cluttered conversation on “Villian’s Theme” concludes, in comes the intimidating strikes of a violin on “Loose Change.” The first official record of the album is one Brent uses to pour out his complaints about fame like water from a bucket. The ladies complain too much for more of his time and the men are clout chasing and/or trying to knock him off his throne. Following the monetary theme at hand, “Price Of Fame,” finds Brent once again fighting for peace in the spotlight. “They just wanna take me off of here,” he quips on the song before letting us know that fame, glitz, glam, people screaming your name, and the demands “isn’t everything.” In other instances on the album, like on “Gravity,” “Wasting Time,” and momentarily on “Addictions,” Brent appears worn out and exhausted by the requirements of those in his world. For what it’s worth, more times than not, he’s only asked for the bare minimum – especially from women – and it’s for this reason that there’s a better word than toxic to describe the 26-year-old singer.

In all reality, Brent is more selfish than toxic, that’s seemingly the message on Wasteland. Sure, each share qualities that intersect, but I’d argue that the latter better represents the Maryland native. It’s selfishness that leads to him making a red carpet appearance with his side chick on “Oblivion” moments after his baby mother expresses her frustrations towards feeling lonely and uncared for on “Egomaniac.” It’s selfishness that sees Brent check in with nonchalance for a woman and her seemingly unfounded complaints on “Ghetto Gatsby.” “I can’t buy you happiness if you ain’t got it,” he sings. “Move you to a place, still ain’t what you wanted.” Notably, just two songs later comes “Wasting Time,” the Drake-featured track that arrives as an ode to a minimalistic and unbothered relationship, one that brings a twinkle to the eye of Brent.

In a way, it’s a good thing that Brent is very front-facing about his desires; that way you know exactly what you’re getting into with him. He isn’t controlling, he tells you to do as you please on “Dead Man Walking.” He wants you to view the world as he does as he proudly flexes his approaches and offers to teach them on the foot-stomping “Role Model.” Even in his most love-driven moments, your disappointment about his true personality isn’t something he can fix as noted on “Heal Your Heart.” Brent is a rockstar, matter of fact, he’s a “Rolling Stone” as he coolly reminds us. On that song, he sings, “I’m sorry in advance if I let you down,” with enough sincerity and sympathy that you almost believe he’s genuinely apologetic. But as we know, it’s nonchalance towards others hurt by a lifestyle he loves that takes precedent. The real Brent arrives a few lines earlier. “I’m a rolling stone,” he declares. “I’m too wild for you to own / In a whip that’s meant to speed.”

While he’s not opposed to settling down, Brent is opposed to slowing down. He told us there was no such thing as too fast, but as we hear at the end of “Wake Up Call,” that’s not totally true. He realizes this as his car tumbles to destruction as he rushes to try and save his pregnant baby mother from a suicide attempt. During the last seconds of Brent’s frantic phone call with her, she bluntly says, “No, you can’t always get what you want.” He once said F*ck The World, and while he was completely in his right to say that, the world now returns the insult. The thing is, the world – this chaotic Wasteland that Brent finds himself in – is through his own creation. “Life moves fast when you do what you want,” he sings on “Jackie Brown.” What he soon learns through this album’s well-crafted, dark, and vivid records is that the fast life is oftentimes a death race rather than a carefree cruise through the city.

Wasteland is out now via Lost Kids LLC. You can stream it here.

(Spoilers from The Boys season finale will be found below.)

The Boys said goodbye to a Supe during the third season finale, but fortunately, this Supe did not shuffle off from this mortal coil as temporarily believed. Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) put her life on the line to push Soldier Boys (Jensen Ackles) out a skyscraper window, but due to a rescue campaign (seemingly on behalf of her queer fans), she made it out alive, unbeknownst to the public (and Vought, because Colby Minifie’s Ashley erased the footage) at large. Now, Maeve gets to go retire and live a private life with her partner, but before that happened, boy, did she ever throw down against Antony Starr’s Homelander.

Maeve did the physical work after Billy Butcher dropped the ball. She punched the daylights out of Homelander, and although she suffered some serious facial injuries in the process, she still gathered all of her strength to make sure that Soldier Boy couldn’t kill everyone. Whereas Billy was distracted by his promise to protect Ryan, which will likely do more harm than good since he’s now bonding with his bio dad, Homelander. But see that look on Maeve’s face ^^^ when she managed to draw blood on Homelander’s perfectly chiseled face? She’s been waiting a long time for that to happen, and her fans on Twitter loved to see it.

Also! Maeve got her happy ending. Black Noir certainly didn’t get one, but this is a wonderful turn of events because Maeve finally did the thing.

The Boys‘ Season 3 finale is currently streaming on Amazon.

As fans have been enjoying, rewatching, and meme-ing the final two episodes of Stranger Things season four, there is one criticism that stands out among the rest: the finale is just too dang long. Luckily, the Duffer Bros know that, but they have a pretty valid explanation: the show just goes too hard.

“I think we just couldn’t find a good spot to break it because there’s almost an hour of build-up tension, and then it just goes hard for an hour,” Ross explained to Collider. Duffer adds that the episode would’ve felt incomplete and used.

“Then we have our 25 minutes of coming down the coda. It would’ve just not been a very satisfying episode to stop it after that first hour. In our opinion, it just would’ve petered out. We didn’t want to force an ending, so we just figured, well, it’ll just be this monster episode. If you want to pause it, go ahead.” It’s almost as if viewers could use something like a commercial break to split up the scenes, right?

Matt then explained that perhaps the timing could have been better, with the season split equally to help reduce that season finale bloat: “If we were to do it again, I would probably make the split earlier,” he explains. “I would write it into the narrative. I would love to see all eight at once, but it’s also, people talk about it more when it’s split up. It’s way better that you guys split it up, we’re able to keep writing about it.”

Despite the length, fans went all out: the series recently reached 1 billion (!!!!) hours watched, and it will likely keep climbing as viewers dissect each and every frame of the finale. They might as well just release the fifth season in theaters at this point.

As for if the final season will get the same split treatment, the Brothers add that it’s a balancing act. ” I do enjoy what we did this season, and that you get a bit of both worlds, and that you were able to devour a lot of content and get into the characters and story, but at the same time, allow for discussion and all that in between.” There sure was a whole lot of discussion!

(Via Collider)

Last month, 23-year-old singer Niki announced her new album Nicole and released the lead single “Before.” She’s back today with another new track from the LP; it’s called “Oceans & Engines,” written when she was only 17. She also revealed that the release date for the album is August 12.

“Oceans & Engines” shows off her skill for storytelling, in a Phoebe Bridgers or Angel Olsen kind of way, especially when it comes to narratives about pain and loss: “How is it now that somehow you’re a stranger? / You were mine just yesterday / I pray the block in my airway dissipates / And instead deters your airplane’s way,” she sings. About the song, she said:

“I wrote this song in 2016 when I was 17 experiencing the earth-shattering heartbreak of a first love moving away for good. It is massively dramatic & long with a naïveté & innocence I look back on fondly now at 23. Like she had no idea about what was going to happen. Like the fact that after writing it in bed at ungodly hours of an 11th grade weeknight snacking on stale cereal she would eventually revisit the song and release it years later. Life can be quite cyclical at times and that has become painfully obvious throughout the process of re-working these songs that are some years old now. Can’t wait for you all to hear each one nestled in the plush & pillowy company of sister songs when the album drops in August but in the mean time, here’s a second snippet of my favorite thing I’ve made so far.”

Watch the music video for “Oceans & Engines” above.

Nicole is out 8/12. Pre-order it here.

Charlie Puth’s latest album, Voicenotes, dropped in 2018 and a lot has happened in the singer-songwriter’s life since then. Perhaps most notably, he’s become a major TikTok star, having one of last year’s most-viewed musician accounts on the platform. He’s used that to his advantage musically, like when he teased “Light Switch” before its release earlier this year.

Now, Puth’s third album is on the way, as Puth has announced Charlie is set for release on October 7, and it’s an album that was formed significantly by his online presence.

Yesterday, Puth wrote on Instagram, “This album was born on the internet, and I’ve had so much fun making it in front of all of you this past year. 2019 me used to think that in order to be an artist, you had to hide away and talk to nobody to make your art. Turns out you make MUCH better art when you involve millions of people in the process. (For me at least.) I hope you scream cry every word when I sing these songs on tour because they wouldn’t be here without you. Thank you.”

Meanwhile, Puth was on NBC’s Today this morning to perform “Light Switch” and his Jung Kook collaboration “Left And Right.”

Charlie is out 10/7 via Atlantic. Pre-order it here.

Charlie Puth is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Better Call Saul returns from its midseason break on Monday, July 11. The nominations for the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards will be announced the following day. If Rhea Seehorn isn’t freaking finally nominated for her performance as Kim Wexler on arguably the best show on television, it will not be all good, man.

In a New York Times profile of Seehorn that came out today, Better Call Saul co-creator Peter Gould had only glowing things to say about the actress. “There wasn’t even a remote second choice,” he said about someone else playing Kim. “If we had not cast Rhea Seehorn in this role, we would be talking about a very different show right now.” Better Call Saul would still be a very good show without Seehorn, but it’s an all-time great show largely because of her. And the Kettlemans. Can’t forget the Kettlemans.

Seehorn also teased the final six episodes:

“The next six episodes, this whole season, was probably the most challenging work I’ve done in my career — but blissfully so,” she said in a follow-up phone conversation. “My last day, I left the set and I just thought, I’m going to be thinking about that ending for a very, very long time.”

You can watch a teaser for Better Call Saul‘s final season below.

(Via the New York Times)

Over the past couple of years, it seems like Tyga has been on an ongoing quest to become the most popular ese in East LA. First, he popped up on YG’s “Go Loko” in 2019, and it seems he enjoyed the mariachi vibes so much, he kept going, following up with “Mamacita” (which also featured YG as well as the legend himself, Carlos Santana), then “Ayy Macarena” (featuring the duo responsible for the original monster hit, Los Del Rio), and now, he keeps the Latin party going with “Ay Caramba.” His latest Spanglish-accented single is accompanied by a video that can only truly be described as “ridiculous” — but in the best way.

Tyga in a fat suit? Check. Tyga with a foot-long mustache? Check. Tyga as a freaking luchador? Check. This video has it all. Tyga really leans into Mexican pop culture archetypes and looks very much like he’s having the time of his life doing so. It’s nice when rappers don’t take themselves so seriously. Tyga’s rhymes on the track, though, let you know that he hasn’t given himself completely to self-parody. Among the things prompting Bart Simpson’s signature exclamation throughout the song: a “big ol’ Glock on the hip,” a woman who “remind me of Tabasco,” and his Porsche when he “press on the turbo.”

Although he’s flown under the radar for a while now, the Compton-claiming rapper has become a pretty reliable supplier of worthwhile party raps, including “Run” with YG and BIA, “Freaky Deaky” with Doja Cat, and “Mrs. Bubblegum,” which has its own hilariously tongue-in-cheek video.

Watch Tyga’s “Ay Caramba” video above.