Category: Viral

In this week’s edition of UPROXX Sessions, Sacramento firestarter ShooterGang Kony stops by the studio to deliver a braggadocious performance of his new song “Moon Walking.”

Built around a loose-limbed funk sample and thumping drums, “Moon Walking” finds Kony boasting about his big bands, his macking skills, and his deadeye aim. It’s a prime example of the ever-increasing library of tracks that have made him a hometown hero in Northern California, with an off-kilter flow and a penchant for double-take-inducing punchlines.

The 21-year-old ShooterGang Kony initially began rapping while locked up in juvenile detention but took off when he was released and his rap partner ShooterGang JoJo was locked up instead. He’s since made a name for himself by putting together a steady stream of releases, including 10 full-length projects (two just this year) and a plethora of collaborations with fellow Bay Area up-and-comers like ALLBLACK, Mozzy, Nef The Pharaoh, OMB Peezy, and SOB X RBE.

Watch ShooterGang Kony’s UPROXX Sessions performance of “Moon Walking” above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s new performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too..

While Selena Gomez has lived much of her life in the public eye after beginning her acting career in Barney & Friends in the early ’00s, the singer has privately struggled with health conditions. Gomez was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease Lupus in 2012 and five years later revealed that she had to undergo a kidney transplant, which was donated to her by her best friend. Though her surgery was several years ago, Gomez has now revealed her scar for the first time on social media.

Gomez showed off her inner thigh scar while promoting a swimsuit brand on Instagram. Addressing the scar, Gomez said she used to purposefully cover it up but now wants to put it on display in order to “feel confident” in her own skin: “When I got my kidney transplant, I remember it being very difficult at first showing my scar. I didn’t want it to be in photos, so I wore things that would cover it up. Now, more than ever, I feel confident in who I am and what I went through…and I’m proud of that.”

Gomez has been open about her health struggles in the past. Back in April, the singer revealed she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder after coping with anxiety and depression throughout her career. Discussing the diagnosis, Gomez said she was relieved to finally be able to categorize what she had been going through. The singer felt “equal parts terrified and relieved — terrified because the veil was lifted but relieved that I finally had the knowledge of why I had suffered with various depressions and anxieties for so many years. I never had full awareness or answers about this condition.”

Check out Gomez’s heartfelt post addressing her kidney transplant scar above.

Like many of us, Megan Thee Stallion is ready to leave 2020 behind, as she tweeted last week, “It’s only like 3 more months left in 2020, yes god.” She’s not done with this year yet, though, as it was announced today that she has a major career milestone to look forward to next month: Meg will be the musical guest on the debut Season 46 episode of Saturday Night Live, which will be hosted by Chris Rock and air on October 3.

This will be Megan’s first time as the primary musical guest on the show, but she has graced its stage before. When Chance The Rapper was on the program last October, Megan joined him for a performance of their collaboration “Handsome.” as for Rock, he has popped up on the program before, as this will be his third time hosting.

The musical guest slot is just the latest achievement for Megan in a year that has been full of them. She earned her first No. 1 single with “Savage,” then quickly picked up another one by collaborating with Cardi B on “WAP.” She also just made an appearance on Time‘s esteemed “100 Most Influential People” list.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

I miss New York City. That’s a weird thing to say since I haven’t left New York City since February, but … you know. It’s been weird watching movies with “New York City as a character” the last few months: this electric city with people everywhere, just going about their business, whatever that may be. When this all first started, these kinds of movies were difficult to watch. But, lately, they’ve been comforting. At least that’s how I felt while watching Sofia Coppola’s new film, On the Rocks (which just premiered at New York Film Festival), which is a great New York City movie. It felt like comfort. It felt like eating a big piece of apple pie. (Full disclosure: I actually did eat a piece of apple pie while I watched On the Rocks, so maybe that has something to do with it.)

New York has rebounded since April, when it was at its worst, and is now somewhat vibrant, but colder weather is on its way. And then there’s On the Rocks, a movie that feels like it’s from another, much better planet. A planet where the biggest worry is that your spouse may or may not be having an affair. (In our world, that feels like something that, if it happened, at this point it would be, “Well, I’ll add it to my list.”) And then there’s Bill Murray, racing his car through the streets of a crowded Midtown (Midtown hasn’t been crowded in months), looking like he’s having the time of his life. Imagine that for a second: having the time of your life. Everything in this movie feels so foreign now, I honestly can’t tell if, in normal times, I’d have enjoyed it. But right now, yeah, I sure did.

Laura (Rashida Jones), a novelist living in Manhattan, is starting to have her suspicions about her husband, Dean (Marlon Wayans). He’s been working late a lot at his successful new startup (though I tried to figure out what Dean actually does for a living and all I could come up with was “successful startup owner who talks about social media and ‘clients’ a lot”), he’s acting erratically, and he’s been spending a lot of time with his attractive female coworker.

Laura consults with her father, a Lothario named Felix, played by Bill Murray, who prances and dances through this movie like his life depended on it. Make no mistake, Bill Murray is here in this movie to put on a show. The long-awaited reunion of Murray and Coppola – after 2003’s Lost in Translation, which almost snagged Murray an Oscar – isn’t the introspective, self-aware Bob Harris role. This isn’t Murray self-meditating on his life and career. This is Murray, past all that, deciding, “To hell with all that, let’s have a few cocktails and paint the town red.” This movie feels like the closest we’ll come to just hanging out with Bill Murray for a couple of days.

Which is what Laura does as the two go on an adventure to see just what Dean has been up to. Felix thinks Dean is definitely up to something because, well, Felix speaks from experience and if it were him, he’d be up to something. But Felix is also greasing the wheels a bit because he wants an excuse to hang out with his daughter. And the more she believes Dean is up to no good, the more time he gets with his daughter.

So much time is spent on the father and daughter relationship, it seems to come at the expense of Laura and Dean. Wayans is charming as Dean, but not only do I not believe he and Rashida Jones are married, I have trouble believing they’ve even met before, even though they have two kids. Every interaction between the two feels like something that might be said on a first date.

Coppola also wrote this script and it’s very much written from the perspective of a daughter dealing with a father she loves, but has a few things she wants to get off her chest. And she’s not a stranger to airing out grievances, as she did in Lost in Translation with Giovanni Ribisi’s barely disguised Spike Jonze avatar. But, at this point, who knows. I’m sure she’ll elaborate more on that. And as opposed to Felix, who left Laura’s mother many years before, Coppola’s parents are still married. But, for whatever reason, when Coppola and Murray get together, emotions tend to come out.

On the Rocks is light on plot, but makes up for it with just the sheer joy of Murray and Jones out on the town. The actual plot is only there as an excuse to get the ball rolling for those two. If you’re looking for a night out in New York City with Bill Murray, where he’s singing and dancing his way into your heart, from some carefree other planet that’s almost impossible to recognize now, well you won’t be disappointed. It’s less Lost in Translation and more Remember When Fun Was a Thing?.

‘On The Rocks’ will stream via Apple TV+ beginning October 23rd. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania arrived at the Supreme Court on Thursday to pay their respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. However, they were not greeted warmly by the crowds outside the Supreme Court steps. Trump (who was surprisingly wearing a mask despite repeated attacks on his Democratic challenger Joe Biden for wearing one in accordance with CDC guidelines) got booed the entire time by protesters as others loudly chanted “Vote him out.”

You can watch the video below:

According to CNN, the crowd also pelted Trump with chants of “Honor her wish,” which references the president’s plan to announce a new Supreme Court nominee on Saturday in direct defiance of Ginsburg’s dying wish. According to reports, the justice told her granddaughter, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” Not only is Trump not waiting until after the election, but he recently told Fox & Friends that he doesn’t believe those were Ginsburg’s final words.

“I don’t know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff or [Chuck] Schumer and [Nancy] Pelosi?” Trump said. “I would be more inclined to the second. That came out of the wind, it sounds so beautiful, but that sounds like a Schumer deal or maybe Pelosi or shifty Schiff.”

Republicans plan to move quickly confirming Trump’s Supreme Court nominee as GOP senators have already confirmed their support without even knowing who the nominee will be. If Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moves fast enough, Trump’s pick could be installed to the court before the election, but it’s a small window. However, there is still plenty of time to push the nominee through in the lame duck session, should Trump lose the election, which would even further defy Ginsburg’s dying wish.

(Via CNN on Twitter)

With the COVID-19 pandemic upending her community, Brooklyn-based singer Tiffany Obi turned to healing those who had lost loved ones the way she knew best — through music.

Obi quickly ran into one glaring issue as she began performing solo at memorials. Many of the venues where she performed didn’t have the proper equipment for her to play a recorded song to accompany her singing. Often called on to perform the day before a service, Obi couldn’t find any pianists to play with her on such short notice.

As she looked at the empty piano at a recent performance, Obi’s had a revelation.

“Music just makes everything better,” Obi said. “If there was an app to bring musicians together on short notice, we could bring so much joy to the people at those memorials.”

Using the coding skills she gained at Pursuit — a rigorous, four-year intensive program that trains adults from underserved backgrounds and no prior experience in programming — Obi turned this market gap into the very first app she created.

She worked alongside four other Pursuit Fellows to build In Tune, an app that connects musicians in close proximity to foster opportunities for collaboration.

When she learned about and applied to Pursuit, Obi was eager to be a part of Pursuit’s vision to empower their Fellows to build successful careers in tech. Pursuit’s Fellows are representative of the community they want to build: 50% women, 70% Black or Latinx, 40% immigrant, 60% non-Bachelor’s degree holders, and more than 50% are public assistance recipients.

“Technology is the future and I knew Pursuit would give me access to the future I want to build for myself,” Obi said. “It’s obvious that minority students from diverse and nontraditional backgrounds don’t have access to all of the knowledge that’s out there and Pursuit is putting it right into our laps.”

Putting that knowledge into action, In Tune took the Audience Choice Award at Pursuit’s virtual Technical Showcase — a competition that gives Fellows the chance to demo their apps and get feedback from engineers in the industry.

Courtesy of Tiffany Obi

More than one hundred viewers tuned in and voted for their favorite app. Fellows also received feedback in real-time from a panel of judges.

“Winning the showcase was icing on the cake because we stayed true,” Obi said. “We knew our ‘why’ and believed in it. When we were all working together in the code and fixing it, sometimes 12 hours would go by before we even took a break.”

While none of those Fellows had any prior experience developing an app, the group received mentorship from Manish Singh, an iOS developer at Capital One, to help bring their vision to life in just six weeks.

Singh joined four other associates from Capital One to comprise roughly half of the mentors to Pursuit’s current class of Fellows. Capital One has partnered with Pursuit since 2014. This year, the company’s associates made up the entirety of the judging panel at the Technical Showcase.

Mentors from Capital One like Singh or Adrian Bolinger, a software engineer who has volunteered with Pursuit, are eager to contribute to the organization’s vision to create a thriving and inclusive tech industry.

“Capital One is doing something that is going to have a long lasting impact — it’s not going to be ephemeral or go away,” says Adrian Bolinger, a software engineer at Capital One who volunteers with Pursuit. “Pursuit Fellows walk away from this experience with something that nobody can ever take away from them.”

Obi saw this mentorship from Capital One engineers as an invaluable part of In Tune’s development.

“It meant everything to have Manish take a look at what we were building and show us the next steps he would take,” Obi said. “As I was coding I would talk him through every part of the process in the simplest of terms, as if I was explaining my steps to a rubber ducky.”

Courtesy of Manish Singh

Singh knew he was mentoring a truly special group when he first met them and learned of their diverse backgrounds.

While his formal mentorship to this group of Fellows concluded after the technical showcase, Alex Paul, lead iOS instructor at Pursuit, says that Singh is continuing to help Obi and her teammates launch the app publicly.

Paul sees mentorships from Capital One engineers as an instrumental resource to the success of Pursuit’s Fellows.

“Students from underrepresented backgrounds often don’t always have a sibling or friend that studied coding and can teach them, especially if they’re the first one to go to college in their family,” Paul said.

In addition to helping launch careers in tech, Paul says that mentors from Capital One will be pivotal in helping Fellows advance their careers.

“What happens now is that people like Tiffany will give back to Fellows,” Paul said. “Pursuit is founded on this cycle of giving.”

Obi says she is committed to ensuring that future Fellows benefit from the same mentorship she did.

“It means everything to be a part of the set of people that are breaking down barriers in tech,” Obi said. “I want to be a leader for future generations who may want to follow in my footsteps. Even now, I sometimes sit my nephew next to me while I code so that when he’s introduced to it down the road he can fly through the process.”

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather has become a beloved voice of reason, knowledge, and experience for many Americans on social media the past few years. At 88, Rather has seen more than most of us, and as a journalist, he’s had a front row seat as modern history has played out. He combines that lifetime of experience and perspective with an eloquence that hearkens to a time when eloquence mattered, he called us to our common American ideals with his book “What Unites Us,” and he comforts many of is with his repeated message to stay “steady” through the turmoil the U.S. has been experiencing.

All of that is to say, when Dan Rather sounds the alarm, you know we’ve reached a critical historical moment.

Yesterday, President Trump again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the election when directly asked if he would—yet another democratic norm being toppled. Afterward, Rather posted the following words of wisdom—and warning—to his nearly three million Facebook fans:

“There is no more time for silence. There is no more time for choosing party over country. There is no more time for weighing the lesser of two evils. All women and men of conscience must speak or they are complicit in America lurching towards a dangerous cliff of autocracy and chaos.

This is a moment of reckoning unlike any I have seen in my lifetime. I have seen this country in deep peril, as the hungry begged for sustenance during the Great Depression, as the Nazis marched across Europe and the Japanese across Asia, as missiles were moved into Cuba, as our political leaders were murdered, as a president ran a criminal conspiracy from the Oval Office, as planes were hijacked into skyscrapers. All of these were scary times, but through it all I never worried about a president actively undermining American democracy and inciting violence to do so – even Nixon, for all of his criminal activity.

What Donald Trump said today are the words of a dictator. To telegraph that he would consider becoming the first president in American history not to accept the peaceful transfer of power is not a throw-away line. It’s not a joke. He doesn’t joke. And it is not prospective. The words are already seeding a threat of violence and illegitimacy into our electoral process.

I suspect he is doing this because he feels he needs to. It is the same reason he sought dirt on Joe Biden, because he is deeply afraid of losing. Losing an election could mean losing in a court of law. It could mean prison time and ruin. But I suspect Trump’s motives are more instinctual. He needs to hold on to power for the sake of power. He cannot lose, even if he has to cheat to win. Even if he has to blow up American democracy. He considers little if any about 200,000 plus deaths from COVID. Why would he care about our Constitution or Bill of Rights?

There is no sugarcoating the dangers and darkness we live in. But I remain heartened that the majority of Americans do not want this. Trump is in danger of losing states that he should be winning handily. Yes, his base is energized and numerous. But so is the opposition. I have seen opposition parties in foreign countries channel the morality of their causes to bring great change. And most of those opposition movements didn’t have the strength, power, and resources of those who stand against Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has himself defined the stakes of the election. This is a battle for American democracy as we’ve known it. We are well past warning shots. Allies across the political spectrum are ringing alarm bells. Right now, all those seeking to defeat Donald Trump know winning a close election may not be enough. The size of a victory will likely matter. Failing that, what happens? I don’t know. But I would say we all should try to remain steady. Try to conserve our energy for the battles ahead. Be committed to your community, your country, and your conscience. If enough Americans of decency and courage come together, the future of this nation can be better, fairer, and more just.”

Thank you, sir, for reminding us of the true American values that should always be kept front and center, and for keeping us from slipping into despair over what we see happening to our democracy and over how many people seem blind to the reality right in front of them. You are truly a national treasure, Mr. Rather.

Earlier this week, it looked like Daniel Lopatin was teasing something called Magic OPN. Well, that was just about right: Today, Oneohtrix Point Never has announced a new album, Magic Oneohtrix Point Never. To preview the record, Lopatin has shared a “Drive Time Suite,” which consists of the album’s first three tracks: “Cross Talk I,” “Auto & Allo,” and the Caroline Polachek-featuring “Long Road Home.”

Press materials note the album name (and therefore Lopatin’s own performing name) comes from “a misheard play on words of Boston’s Magic 106.7.” The album itself is described:

“[The album is] a nostalgic and self-referential career-defining body of work, collaging maximalist baroque-pop within atmospheric glitter. […] Lopatin turns the dial towards his own inner frequencies, drawing from the origins of OPN as a means to discover a new found sense of levity and spirit during tumultuous times. The structure of Magic Oneohtrix Point Never ‘mOPN’ itself loosely summons the broadcasting logic of radio dayparts, starting in the morning and ending overnight, latticed together with kaleidoscopic, twitchy transformations of sound between the dials.”

Listen to the new songs above and find the Magic Oneohtrix Point Never art and tracklist below.

1. “Cross Talk I”
2. “Auto & Allo”
3. “Long Road Home”
4. “Cross Talk II”
5. “I Don’t Love Me Anymore”
6. “Bow Ecco”
7. “The Whether Channel”
8. “No Nightmares”
9. “Cross Talk III”
10. “Tales From the Trash Stratum”
11. “Answering Machine”
12. “Imago”
13. “Cross Talk IV / Radio Lonelys”
14. “Lost But Never Alone”
15. “Shifting”
16. “Wave Idea”
17. “Nothing’s Special”

Magic Oneohtrix Point Never is out 10/30 via Warp. Pre-order it here.

It’s been nearly two years since Kurt Vile released his eighth studio album Bottle It In and the singer is just about ready to share a handful of new songs. On Thursday, Vile announced the upcoming EP, Speed, Sound, Lonely KV, consisting of two covers, two original tracks, and a very special duet with late singer John Prine.

Prine recently passed away in early April due to complications after contracting COVID-19. Prior to falling ill, Prine and Vile were introduced by a good friend at Nashville studio The Butcher Shoppe. After hitting it of, the two jumped into the recording booth to track a swooning duet of Prine’s 1979 song “How Lucky,” which is featured on Vile’s upcoming EP.

In a statement alongside the EP announcement, Vile praised his Prine collaboration as “the single most special musical moment” of his life:

“The truth is John was my hero for a long time when he came into The Butcher Shoppe to recut one of his deepest classics with me. And, man, I was floating and flying and I couldn’t hear anything he told me while he was there till after he was gone for the night. A couple nights later we were playing ‘How Lucky’ together again; this time onstage at the Grand Ole Opry on New Year’s Eve at the turn of 2020. Nothing like seeing John and his band of musical brothers and family and friends playing into the new decade in front of an adoring audience on that stage in Nashville, TN… and, yup, that’s just how lucky we all got that night.”

Listen to “How Lucky” with Prine above and find Vile’s Speed, Sound, Lonely KV EP art and tracklist below.

1. “Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness”
2. “Gone Girl”
3. “Dandelions”
4. “How Lucky” Feat. John Prine
5. “Pearls”

Speed, Sound, Lonely KV is out 10/2 via Matador. Pre-order it here.

Some male celebrities become visibly awkward when asked about being an Internet Boyfriend (Ryan Gosling is a prime example of this), but not Nicholas Braun. He’s embraced his status as Twitter’s favorite tall, skinny white guy (Jonah from Veep is ranked #34,846 between me and the It Follows dude), and even encourages it.

“There’s been a bunch of people saying they want me to hit them with my car like in a sexy way or, like, stomp on their neck with my Crocs or slap them in the face,” the Emmy-nominated Succession star said in a video posted to his Instagram. “These kind of violent, sexy type things, but the car thing is really concerning, and I just wanted to say, I’m down, like, let’s figure it out ’cause I want to help.” I’m listening…

“For me, the only thing is just like I don’t want the car to get damaged that much and I don’t want a ton of blood on the car and things like that. If we can find a way to do it where you can just pop off the hood like really lightly and fly through the air and get all the stuff you need out of it and land not too badly… I’m just thinking about hospital bills and all that stuff, and I just don’t want to get into insurance problems. But whatever you need, I’m here to help.”

Much like ATN News, Cousin Greg is:

Getting hit by Braun’s car is child’s play, though. Cousin Greg, I want you to crumple me like a piece of paper into a ball and throw me in the trash and bring me out to the dumpster minutes before the garbage truck comes by, and then I’m brought to the dump and eventually end up on Trash Island where I decompose. That’s the “sexy way.”