Category: Viral

Humans are complex creatures, and nothing demonstrates that more than hip-hop culture’s obsession with tension. From Cardi B and Nicki Minaj’s longstanding civil war of women in the game to Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s track-for-track showdown, beef pays well (in streaming revenue, notoriety, and more).

But not everyone wants to get caught up in an avoidable feud. Behind the scenes, it appears Big Sean and Kendrick Lamar were able to dodge a dust up (despite fans wanting the war of words).

Did Kendrick Lamar Apologize For Dissing Big Sean?

Today (August 2), Big Sean sat down with Charlamagne Tha God for his latest series, Out Of Context, to discuss his hot-and-cold working relationship with Kendrick Lamar. When addressing the unreleased version of the Compton native’s song “Element,” Sean revealed that Lamar privately apologized in a text message exchange for his the bars: “Big Sean keep sneak dissin’, I let it slide / I think his false confidence got him inspired / I can’t make them respect you, baby, it’s not my job / You’re finally famous for who you date, not how you rhyme, boy / Cute-ass raps, get your puberty up.”

Sean also opened up about where he believed the issue actually arose. “Joe Budden and made this, there’s a Kendrick and Big Sean beef,” he said. “To the point where I tried to ignore it. But he made that narrative so f*cking real that I think it really did become a thing.”

Watch Sean’s full interview with Charlamagne above.

The last time a Blackpink member starred in an HBO series, it was The Idol. Something tells me the next time will go slightly smoother.

Lisa will make her acting debut in The White Lotus season 3, which takes place in Thailand. There’s no trailer for the upcoming season yet, so the Blackpink rapper is doing her part to promote the show on Instagram. Lisa (who will be credited by her birth name, Lalisa Manobal) posed in a cropped blue-and-white tee that was printed with monkeys swinging from branching and, if you look closely, the words “The White Lotus Thailand” printed on it.

If there’s not an extended plot about a monkey stealing Walton Goggins‘ wallet in season 3, I am going to be so mad. Anyway, you can see the post below.

The White Lotus creator Mike White teased that season 3 will be “a satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality.” The new characters in the “longer, bigger, crazier” season include “a patriarch, a female corporate executive, an actress, a couple of mothers, a country club wife, a misfit, and a yogi.” It’s unclear who Lisa is playing, but she will be joined by Goggins, Carrie Coon, Natasha Rothwell, Leslie Bibb, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Parker Posey, and Scott Glenn, among many others.

The White Lotus season 3 premieres in 2025.

Pop culture collectibles company Super7 has teamed up with Madlib and the late MF DOOM‘s estate to release a new toy commemorating the 20th anniversary of the duo’s 2004 collaboration, Madvillainy, and it looks SO. FREAKING. COOL. The new 16-inch vinyl action figure is modeled after the Madvillain character from the album’s “ALL CAPS” video. It’s pretty poseable, with articulation at the neck, shoulders, waist, and ankles, and it’s accompanied by a merch capsule with art from the original “ALL CAPS” artist, James Reitano. The figure and capsule will be on sale from Monday, August 5 at 11 AM ET through Wednesday, August 7 at 11:59 PM ET at Gasdrawls.com. The capsule features new shirts, sweatshirts, caps, stickers, a skate deck and more. Check it out below.

Speaking of collectible Madvillain vinyl, while the 20th anniversary special edition vinyl is officially sold out, you can still get the album on vinyl and discover why it was so beloved at the time and since (there’s a reason we always use ALL CAPS when we spell the man’s name!). MF DOOM’s own Metalface Records has also reissued the rapper’s old group KMD’s controversial record Black Bastards.

Meanwhile, Super7 continues putting out classic hip-hop figures, such as these Outkast action figures, so check out more at their website.

Something rather unexpected happened to past Uproxx cover artists Khruangbin during lockdown. It wasn’t just that their 2020 album Mordechai was well received when it gave people an ideal soundtrack to lounge at home when that’s all any of us could safely do. It’s that it was like…really well received. So much so that as soon as COVID restrictions began to soften and Khruangbin started playing shows again, the Houston-formed, world music-minded trio quickly found themselves playing to the biggest crowds of their career. They were blowing up.

“It felt like going from lifting a 15 pound dumbbell to a 40 pound one,” drummer DJ Johnson says on a Zoom call from Switzerland along with bassist Laura Lee. “If you throw the 2017 version of us in front of the same audiences that we’re playing now, it would’ve been a complete meltdown. It’s the steps you take in between that gives you what you need along the way to be able to do it. We really had to work at it.”

Two hours after our call, Khruangbin would be playing in front of 15,000 people at the Luzern Live Festival. It’s a sizable crowd, on par with some of the venues the band will be playing for on the upcoming dates of the A LA SALA Tour. From August onward, Johnson, Lee, and guitarist Mark Speer are playing multiple night “residency” style stops at giant venues like the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Forest Hills Stadium in New York, and Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre. It’s a testament not only to Khruangbin’s surging popularity, but also to how much their live set has grown.

At a 2022 show at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre, I was struck by the evolution of the group’s concert. Five years earlier, a mechanical approach of delivering their music to the audience suited a stony, vibey aura of a chill and relaxed mindset. Then far more enigmatic, Speer and Lee’s wigged heads and bodies swayed while their feet moved sparsely. But at the Greek, there was a palpable kinetic energy from the pair while Johnson paced the beat behind them, emboldening the set and introducing new emotions to the Khruangbin experience. Speer and Lee took turns stepping into an elevated catwalk splitting the audience, coyly dancing to the rhythms of the globe and playing off of each other’s vibrations. It was subtle choreography, but it really made the music come alive and introduced new levels to the artist-fan connection.

Now touring behind their April-released album, A LA SALA, Khruangbin could very well be playing in arenas. But they’ve decided to play multiple night runs at outdoor amphitheaters instead. It’s a conscious choice they made on their own terms for a couple of reasons. First, it’s giving themselves an opportunity to flex their entire four album discography (not counting collaboration releases with Leon Bridges and Vieux Farka Toure.)

“We decided to steer the reins of where we wanted to go,” Lee says. “Because by playing two to three nights in each city, it allows us more freedom to play more of our entire catalog and we want the fans that are going to come every night to have a different experience each time. And we want that too! Because in the Mordecai run, the way the show was programmed hamstrung us a bit in terms of how much freedom we had.”

Lee says the three of them huddle before any meeting they’re going to have with anyone outside of the band to ensure that they’re always on the same page with each other. And while their stature within the live music world essentially had them pegged for arenas as the next natural step, Lee credits advice from Speer that led her on a journey of sorts to understand why an arena is not where Khruangbin will be playing anytime soon.

“Mark was always dead set on not playing arenas specifically for sonics and connections. He told me that, ‘You play melodic bass lines and they won’t work in an arena. It’s better to just have one note bass lines where you hammer it home because that’s how the room takes it, that’s what the room wants — and the room is not going to take the intricacies of some of what we do and really sing.’ So I spent quite a bit of time the last couple of years going to arena shows, specifically to see what works and what doesn’t work. What I liked and didn’t like. So I got on board with the “not going there” piece not out of fear, but that it’s just not what suits us right now. Maybe there’ll be a record where it really works, but not for what we’re doing at this moment.”

It’s a refreshing take in an era where the corporate live music promoter model is to keep growing a band from the small capacity space into a mid-sized venue and so on down the line until eventually landing an arena tour; that’s where the big money is. Who knows what a Khruangbin arena show would look like? Would they add more members to the band to make the sound bigger and bolder? That’s not something the trio is into finding out anytime soon. Because what makes this unit so phenomenal, is that it’s still the same three people making all of the sounds that so many fans have grown to love.

“We take it as a challenge,” Johnson says. “That whatever we put down is something that can be recreated on stage with just three people, without having to rely on backing tracks or bringing another entity on board. It’s like being a minimalist and a maximalist at the same time.”

Over the past couple of months, if you were online at all, there’s a strong likelihood you heard “Not My Problem,” the catchy breakout single from New York rising star Laila! (yes, the punctuation is part of her name). If you did any research on the 18-year-old artist, you might have learned a surprising tidbit: Laila! was rumored for the past year to be the daughter of a hip-hop icon, Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def of Black Star).

However, since she is such a new artist, it was hard to confirm this fact, as she’d done almost no interviews and only released a handful of well-received singles. So…

Is Laila! Really Mos Def’s Daughter?

As it turns out… yes! She confirmed her parentage in an interview with Complex‘s Jordan Rose. While the interview hasn’t been published yet as of this writing, Complex shared a clip on social media. While she said he didn’t give her any specific special sauce to help her on her way, he was supportive of her artistic journey. “I have just always been my own artist in a way,” she said. “That’s the cool thing, because I feel like as a kid, whenever we would just jam sesh and vibe out, me and him, I always had my own style. I always had my own thing going on. And he’s always just been like, ‘Okay kid, I see you.’”

An interview that was published was with established hip-hop media personality Angela Yee, in which she addressed her dad again. “They’ve always been so supportive of everything that I’ve wanted to do,” she said. “They never question what I want to do. My mom, my dad, you guys have always just been like, ‘Okay, that’s what she’s gonna do. That’s Laila!’ And I feel like that’s always made me feel like I can take on the world, or I can show the world who I am because I’ve always had that in my life.”

You can check out the full interview below.

One of the main themes throughout The Last Dance was that everyone on the Chicago Bulls really did not like Jerry Krause all that much. Krause, who passed away in 2017, was the franchise’s general manager as it won six NBA championships during the Michael Jordan era, and received criticism from just about everyone on the team.

It was not always fair how much hate Krause got, and it led to a really tense moment where he was booed by Bulls fans at a Ring of Honor. And in a recent interview with Pablo Torre, the doc’s director, Jason Hehir, explained that there was one moment that the NBA pushed back on during the creation of the doc, and it involved Scottie Pippen’s disdain for Krause.

“The one thing that the NBA pushed back on, in the entirety of this, process was a clip where Scottie, in the locker room — they were joking around, saying what they were gonna do when they won the title,” Hehir explained. “And Scottie, I’m paraphrasing here, basically said, ‘I’m gonna stick a cattle prod up Jerry Krause’s butt and give that a guy a heart attack,’ or something like that. And everybody laughed. But it wasn’t, like, ‘Oh my god, keep the cattle prods away from Scottie,’ he said it in the heat of the moment.

“So, I included that in our rough cuts because I wanted people to see what this guy was going through day in and day out,” he continued. “And that’s the one thing that they made me take out in three or four years of doing this. It wasn’t, like, Michael calling people a b*tch or anything, it wasn’t that, it was that comment from Scottie to Jerry Krause.”

Hehir explained that he hoped the team’s open disdain for Krause would end up making him a more empathetic figure with people who watched the doc, but that backfired, and the public believed that the filmmakers had it out for Krause, which he stressed was “not the intent.”

The summer is nearly over, but festival session isn’t. Los Angeles’ premiere showcase of alternative, electronic, and emerging local acts, Hard Summer Music Festival, is this weekend.

Across August 3 and 4, Inglewood’s Hollywood Park (next to SoFi Stadium) will house dozens of music lovers and entertainers alike. While most are committed to catching the top billed acts such as Disclosure, Jamie XX, Channel Tres, Boyz Noize, Nelly Furtado, and Major Lazer, don’t cheat yourself by missing the tons of other notable performers.

This year’s lineup is stuffed, so you’re going to want to plan ahead of time. Continue below to view the set times (all times p.m. and local) for Hard Summer Music Festival 2024.

Hard Summer Festival Set Times For Saturday, August 3, 2024

Across the five stages, Hard, Harder, Green, Purple, and Pink, Disclosure, Nelly Furtado, Skepta, Zeds Dead, Boys Noize, Jamie XX, and Channel Tres are the most anticipated acts on August 3.

On the Hard Stage, Nelly Furtado will start her set at 8. Then Disclosure will end things at 9:30. Zeds Dead will close out the Green stage at 10. On the Purple Stage, Channel Tres is scheduled for 6:30. Jamie XX will take over at 7:50, followed by Boys Noize at 9:30.

View all the set times for August 3 below.

Hard Summer Festival Set Times For Sunday, August 4, 2024

On the Hard Stage, Sofi Tukker’s DJ set is scheduled to start at 6. Major Lazer will close out the Purple Stage at 9.

View all the set times for August 4 below.

Mariah Carey has awoken from her post holiday slumber. Today (August 2), Carey has announced tour dates for Mariah Carey’s Christmas Time, a new tour.

Even the “All I Want For Christmas Is You” singer admits in her social media post that “it’s not time yet,” but these sorts of things need some advance planning, so here we are. The tour goes down in November and December and will hit 20 cities in the US.

Tickets go on sale starting with a Live Nation pre-sale on August 8 at 10 a.m. local time (access using the code STRUM) via Ticketmaster. A public on-sale will follow on August 9 at 10 a.m. local time.

Find the list of tour dates below.

Mariah Carey’s 2024 Tour Dates: Mariah Carey’s Christmas Time

11/06 — Highland, California @ Yaamava Theater
11/08 — Los Angeles, California @ Hollywood Bowl
11/13 — Greater Palm Springs, California @ Acrisure Arena
11/15 — Phoenix, Arizona @ Footprint Center
11/17 — Austin, Texas @ Moody Center
11/19 — Houston, Texas @ Toyota Center
11/21 — Dallas, Texas @ American Airlines Center
11/23 — Atlanta, Georgia @ State Farm Arena
11/25 — Nashville, Tennessee @ Bridgestone Arena
11/27 — Rosemont, Illinois @ Allstate Arena
11/29 — St. Louis, Missouri @ Enterprise Center
12/01 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
12/03 — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania @ Wells Fargo Center
12/05 — Boston, Massachusetts @ TD Garden
12/07 — Baltimore, Maryland @ CFG Bank Arena
12/09 — Raleigh, North Carolina @ PNC Arena
12/11 — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania @ PPG Paints Arena
12/13 — Newark, New Jersey @ Prudential Center
12/15 — Belmont Park, New York @ UBS Arena
12/17 — Brooklyn, New York @ Barclays Center

If you were forced at Waylon Smithers gunpoint to pick one scene from The Simpsons to prove that it’s the funny TV comedy of all-time, “Dr. Zaius” would have to be in consideration.

In season 7’s “A Fish Called Selma,” Troy McClure (voiced by the GOAT Phil Hartman) is cast in a Planet of the Apes-inspired musical called Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off! (“I love legitimate theater”). He plays the human who hates every ape he sees, from chimpan-a to chimpan-z, until he realizes it was Earth all along. Yes, they finally made a monkey out of him.

The whole sequence is brilliant (“Dr. Zaius! Dr. Zaius!”), but it started with a very “stupid” pitch. Five of them, in fact.

Former Simpsons writer Josh Weinstein, who was the co-showrunner for season 7 with Bill Oakley, shared how the Planet of the Apes sequence came to be. “Perfect opportunity to repeat this writing tip I learned at The Simpsons: Never shoot down an idea, no matter how crazy or stupid it may sound. Lean into it. It may be nothing OR it becomes the Dr Zaius scene, which is, in fact, the combo of 5 separate ‘crazy’ ‘stupid’ pitches,” he wrote on X.

Pitch 1:

It began with Steve Tompkins pitching “What if we did a musical of Planet of the Apes?” This is either a crazy or a stupid idea or both but we all loved it and we could all feel the potential so I say at least let’s explore this and see if it goes anywhere…

Pitch 2:

I was running room but had never scene movie. But I knew a few key things like statue of liberty “it was earth all along” end, “get your hands off me” line and that there was character named Dr. Zaius. I asked room to verify this than pitched “So you know that Falco song?”

Pitch 3:

I don’t remember order of following pitches but George Meyer said “Now hear me out on this…” and then pitched since Zaius is a doctor, why don’t we intersperse song with corny/stupid old vaudeville style joke breaks, like the piano gag. We agree to give that a go.

Pitch 4:

Someone pitches since he’s a doctor, have his nurse begin the song with “Oo, help me, Dr. Zaius”. I have no idea if there is even a nurse in the movie but sure, that’s a great way to kick it off.

Pitch 5:

Someone else (sorry I’m not remembering everyone) pitches that this musical number should have a lot of breakdancing moves in it because at the time, that seemed like a trend in a lot of splashy broadway musicals

And that’s how comedy history is made. You can read the full thread below.

One of the coolest things about the Olympics is seeing high-profile athletes go from place to place and support their fellow athletes. The American men’s basketball team, for example, has been quite busy during their days off, as we’ve seen Anthony Edwards go to table tennis and a bunch of guys on the roster go watch Simone Biles and the women’s gymnastics team.

LeBron James decided to get in on the fun, as he went to watch the beach volleyball duo of Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth on Thursday. The pair beat a team from China despite a lengthy weather delay, one which did not deter the James Gang — the Los Angeles Lakers star was joined by his wife, Savannah, and his daughter, Zhuri. At one point, James was in a particularly good mood, so he started cheering. This got Zhuri cheering, too, and in response, James turned into a dad and started to dance, thereby embarrassing his daughter.

We have to assume that part of this can be blamed on the fact that there is an empty glass next to a mostly empty glass of wine in front of LeBron. But even if that’s not the case, everyone who has ever been in public with one of their parents knows where Zhuri is coming from here.