Category: Viral

The Far Field, Future Islands’ 2017 album, did well for the Baltimore-based group. It didn’t yield a viral Letterman moment like its predecessor, 2014’s Singles, but that’s a tall order. It was rock-solid nonetheless: It was their second album to chart on the Billboard 200 and critics reacted positively to it.

Looking back, though, the band has their issues with it, which they’ve addressed on their upcoming record, As Long As You Are.

As has become increasingly common in this new frontier of a world, the band — Samuel T. Herring, William Cashion, Gerrit Welmers, and Michael Lowry — hopped on a Zoom call, this time with Uproxx for an interview about the new album. During the conversation, they explained how they did things differently this time around: They worked together more than they have in the past, they didn’t let producers dictate their sound, and they didn’t give themselves a deadline, allowing the album to reach its final form on its own schedule.

Since the pandemic limits what a band like Future Islands can do in the lead-up to a new album, Herring says this chat is part of an effort “to be more helpful with things that our management takes care of” and “just being more present” in the promotional process. While everybody was on the call, Herring’s bandmates filled him in on how Baltimore is bouncing back from COVID-19: Like other places, restaurants are opening back up, but concert venues are still far away from resuming operations.

The vocalist was out of the loop as he has been in Sweden spending time with a loved one after pandemic-prompted travel restrictions kept them apart for a while. He’ll be back in the states soon, though: On the As Long As You Are release day (October 9), Future Islands will host the “A Stream Of You And Me” livestream performance. It will be their 1,236th show as a band during their 12-year history, but their only one of this year. That makes 2020 the only year of the band’s existence that they haven’t had a proper tour, which is a major bummer given how they come alive on stage, in a way that no other band really does (watch that Letterman performance if you didn’t click the first time).

Regardless, they still have an album on the way, and that’s worth celebrating. Ahead of its release, the band took time to talk with Uproxx about As Long As You Are, their dream oddball concert environment, and what pop star they’d be keen to do a Taylor Swift/Aaron Dessner-style collaboration with.

The new album is going to be your first in three years. When you guys were promoting The Far Field, the world was a much different place than it is now. How does this album lead-up feel compared to your previous ones?

Samuel T. Herring: There’s a lot less traveling and contact with the guys. This [Zoom] is how we meet now. We’re trying to do other things to promote the record. We’re doing a lot of press right now, which I think is good, just to talk about things. It keeps the four of us connected. It’s always interesting.

Sometimes you don’t really figure out what an album is until you’re done with it, and then you learn even more through the process of going through the press again and talking about things and really discovering the roots of certain songs. I was just going through the demos for the album and realizing, “Oh, that’s how that song was written,” and these kinds of things.

It’s all interesting. We were supposed to be in Japan a week ago and we missed some shows in Mexico already this year. I guess we were supposed to be going on tour any day now, or maybe we were supposed to be on tour right now. It’s really changed a lot of things.

Will, Mike, and Gerrit, you guys did an interview recently, and in it, you said that you actually mixed the album over Zoom. What challenges did that offer and were there actually any positives to doing it that way?

William Cashion: I think it was a blessing in disguise. If we’re all in the same room working on a mix, I have a tendency to just shout out, “Wait, let’s try this thing.” There’s not really any space there to think about things. The way we did it was when we were sent a rough first pass of the mix by Steve Wright, who we mixed the record with. We had his mix for a few days and then we would jump on a Zoom, and there’s a program called Audiomovers that allows us to connect his studio board. We would hear it live from the board in real time and in really high quality.

I think it just gave us a lot of space to really think about what the song needed. It wasn’t painful as we thought it was going to be. It was good. I think we realized that we could mix like that again in the future if we need to. Sam has been living in Sweden lately, so we know now that we could do the mixing process with him there if we needed to.

In that same interview, one of you said that you were not pleased with a few things about the previous album. What were those things and how have you addressed them with the new record?

Herring: I definitely wanted to see the guys creating on their own a bit more. For this album, there’s ideas that are William ideas and there’s ideas that are Gerrit ideas. Then there’s an idea that William and Mike worked together, and then there’s songs that came from the four of us jamming.

In the end, some things just worked out really well. They worked out with Steve doing a great job of working with us, really listening to our ideas, helping us find our ideas. Steve really listened to what we had to say and helped us create what we think we’re supposed to sound like, instead of in the past, even with Singles and The Far Field, when we were working with producers who had ideas about how they wanted to hear it and how they heard Future Islands. Sometimes when you work with people like that, they’re trying to create something really great, but it’s easy for the artist to get lost in that process.

This one was really about us capturing our vision and how we heard things and taking the time to do that. The Far Field was just so rushed that we didn’t want to have that happen again, that there was a deadline that decided when the album was done. We wanted to decide when the album was done.

Sam and Will, you guys stay active outside of the band with Sam’s rap stuff and Will’s ambient stuff. Do influences from those sides of your musical lives find their ways into the new album, or are those just totally their own thing for you guys?

Cashion: I was working on my solo record alongside As Long As You Are. When we would take breaks from working on the Future Islands stuff, I would book studio time actually at the same studio with Steve, working on overdubs and mixing that record. There were some things that I learned about the process and about production that we would apply here and there. It just makes sense to be like, “I learned this thing, let’s try this thing on the song. Let’s see if it works.” I think definitely it had an influence on it in an indirect way.

Herring: I did a song with DJ Shadow [“Our Pathetic Age“], right at the beginning of 2019. It was the most involved back and forth I’ve ever had with writing song lyrics, where I wrote a version and then I sent it to him, he was like, “Not really feeling it.” So I wrote a whole new version and then he was like, “I like these little things, so push that.” And then I wrote another version and then he’s like, “It’s getting better. Now push this.” And then I wrote another version.

Basically, I was losing my mind on the first two or three revisions. By the fourth and fifth, I was completely resigned, in a positive way, to being like, “My job is to help him find his song. This isn’t about me. I need to strip away my ego about, ‘I feel hurt because you don’t like this,’ but being like, ‘Okay, I’m going to help you. If you like these things, I’m going to push these things and then I’ll try to find other things. Do you like this? Do you like this?’ And keep bringing things.” When he was like, “This is great,” that felt really rewarding. Through that process of giving and stripping away, it really taught me a lot about the process of writing.

The most important thing he taught me was not to be afraid to completely throw away a song if need be. Maybe I write something that I completely love, but then maybe the guys won’t like it. In the past, I would maybe pout, like, “Oh, come on. I want that song so bad.” But now it’s like, “No, it’s fine.” These things are all a part of the exercise of music. The most important thing that, for me, in the writing process and working with the guys with this record, is really being able to feel free to experiment and let go again if that’s what it comes to. It’s all beneficial to just writing and pushing yourself. Just exploring is really beautiful.

I think also with the rap stuff, it’s pushed me into some more political places that I haven’t gone with Future Islands too much. When I’m doing solo rap stuff, I can say whatever I want. That’s the raw ego unabashed, like, “This is actually how I feel,” because it’s not reflecting on the guys.

Speaking of being more open to collaborating, I’m sure you saw that Aaron Dessner had a big hand in Taylor Swift’s new album [Folklore]. Do you guys have any thoughts about what big pop star you could work well with?

Herring: I like this question! Who do you got, Gerrit?

Gerrit Welmers: I don’t know. I feel like I’m pretty out of touch with the pop world. Who’s a pop star right now?

Herring: There’s probably a lot of stuff we don’t know. We could write a jam with Rihanna any day.

Cashion: I was going to say Rihanna. Rihanna or Cardi B would be dope.

Herring: Oh yeah, that would be dope. Let’s get both of them on a track. Can you hook us up, Derrick?

I don’t think my contacts list is as deep as you might think, unfortunately.

Herring: [laughs] Rihanna’s voice makes sense, I think we could bounce off each other a little bit. Maybe I’ll sit this one out and you guys can make a track for Rihanna or Cardi B. I’ll chill over there.

Michael Lowry: Is Solange a pop star? It would be cool. I really dug Seat At The Table and that tour. We did a bunch of shows with them. We were sort of following each other for a while and her tour was amazing. I think it would be cool to do stuff with her. Or SZA. I feel like SZA has a cool voice, too.

This one’s for Sam: I saw on Twitter recently that somebody sent you a photo of their wedding rings and they had your lyrics engraved on them. How does it feel that your words resonate with people that deeply, and do you have a favorite lyric off of the new album?

Herring: It’s definitely amazing to see our music reach people in those ways and become a part of people’s lives. It leaves you a little stunned and it’s really beautiful. We’ve been getting pictures of people’s tattoos for years and you’re like, “Oh man, I hope that you like us forever. Hope you don’t change your mind.” I’ll never forget the first time somebody got a tattoo, it was years ago. It was a song from our first band [Art Lord & The Self-Portraits]. That stuff is really amazing, to be able to become a part of people’s lives and a part of people’s stories. That’s one of the things that keep us doing it.

There’s so many great lines on the new album. I’d probably take something off of “Glada.” There’s a bunch of lines in that one: “New canopies arise from the crumbling frameworks, the remnants of fire, and you came as you are.” And, “They said heaven’s a mystery unless you’re a star, unless you have a crown, but they’re wrong.”

There’s a line in that song that is from a dream I had years ago. I was in an astrology class and we were in a planetarium, and the teacher was speaking. When the class was over, everybody cleared out, but I went down to ask the teacher a question. I don’t remember what I asked him, but his answer was, “We are the prey that we seek in the dark.” And it always stayed with me in this weird way. I was just like, “What is it?” That’s the line: “You came from the stars and you said, ‘We are the prey that we seek in the dark.’” We are the prey, bro. [laughs].

You tweeted at Elon Musk in 2018 and you told him that your biggest dream was to be the first band in space. It’s funny, because now would be the perfect time for a concert in space given that you can’t get on an Earth stage now. Space is about as socially distant as you can get. Aside from space, what’s your dream unconventional concert environment?

Lowry: Underwater, in a sea lab or something. Just find the deepest spot and get James Cameron to sink us. Get him to film it. We could even have us going to the stage in those big suits, jumping off an aircraft carrier or something and just sinking to the bottom, then turning the thing and then going in and rocking out.

Cashion: We got asked about doing a show at a dream location for some television show that was filming a couple of years ago. One of the places that we said was Antarctica. The idea was that they were going to fly us or get us and a film crew down there and we’d perform, basically just for the cameras in Antarctica. I think that would be pretty wicked.

Herring: For real?

Cashion Well, that was one of the places that we talked about. Obviously it never came to fruition.

Herring: Oh, okay. I was like, ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me about this?’ [laughs]

As Long As You Are is out October 9 via 4AD. Get it here.

Considering how poorly-received Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 was when it hit consoles back in 2015, there was a whole lot of anticipation over what the latest release in the iconic skateboarding gaming series would end up looking like. Since hitting consoles last week, the reception to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 — a re-release of the first two editions of the series — couldn’t have gone much better, as gamers have heaped widespread praise on the game.

It also apparently hasn’t taken long for some folks to get really, really good at it. An example of this hit the Twitterverse in the early hours of Wednesday morning, when one gamer went through a 2-minute run in The Warehouse and threw down an insane score of more than 10 million points.

The funny thing here is that points were left on the table — if they did not bail at the very end of the run, which came on the heels of a huge combo and resulted in about 3.8 million points, the possibility for one more gigantic combo after the clock hit 0 would have been on the table. Still, this is far more impressive than anything I have done in The Warehouse (my high score’s around 850,000), so upon finishing this sentence, I am going to try and see if I can get within five million of that.

Azniv Korkejian of Bedouine, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, and Hurray For The Riff Raff‘s Alynda Segarra were all on tour together in 2017. The three would often take the stage together, combining each of their distinct voices to add dimension to their harmonies. While on the road, the three decided to do a track together and they landed on a cover of the iconic ’70s group Big Star.

With just a sleepy guitar and the three musicians’ soaring voices, Waxahatchee, Bedouine, and Hurray For The Riff Raff gave a soulful rendition of Big Star’s hit “Thirteen.” Korkejian explained the story in a statement:

“This all started in 2017 when I opened a three bill tour for co-headliners Waxahatchee and Hurray For The Riff Raff. We threw the idea around of doing a song together but weren’t sure what. I was backstage in Columbia, MO when I realized it was the anniversary of Big Star’s ’93 reunion show that had also taken place in Columbia. I was fiddling around with the song in my dressing room when Katie and Alynda walked in. Suddenly I remembered there were 3 verses to split up. We played it as an homage that night and every night after. After the tour wrapped up, I think it was Kevin Morby that insisted we track and share it. Down the road, Katie wrote me that she would be in LA so I tracked the guitar and she came by to visit and put down her part. Down the road some more Alynda put down her part from New Orleans and sent it over the ether. Now 3 years later we’re finally getting to share it.”

Listen to the trio cover “Thirteen” below.

Steve Carell was notorious for making his The Office co-stars break. “I had to duck behind a plant — you can see in the actual episode,” Ed Helms said about filming the scene where Kevin sits on Michael Scott-as-Santa’s lap. “That was like take 30 because I had been laughing in every single take. He’s a genius.” But even Carell would lose it sometimes, especially if the word “pungent” was involved.

In the latest episode of the Office Ladies podcast, co-hosts Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey spoke to director Ken Whittingham and actress Phyllis Smith about the season three episode, “Phyllis’ Wedding.” That’s the one where — you won’t believe this — Phyllis gets married to Bob Vance, inspiring a million “I’m not a Jim looking for a Pam — I’m a Bob looking for a Phyllis” bios on Tinder. Before the ceremony, Michael visits Phyllis in her dressing room, where he accuses her of nervously breaking wind.

“That scene was unbelievable. We had the best time. I don’t know how many times we had to stop to start over because there was one word in particular that we just could not get through,” Smith said on the podcast, via Mashable. “And that was ‘pungent.’ Every time Steve said the word ‘pungent’ he would break out into this high-pitched cackle. And then I would start laughing. And then all of a sudden we heard the Video Village and the sound people outside the door, because we were in a small dressing room area with just the camera guy and a sound boom… So we could hear them cackling and laughing on the outside.” Smith said she was laughing so hard that “I couldn’t breathe.”

You can see Carell struggling to keep it together in the episode.

If you come across Carell in public (post-COVID, of course), whisper the word “pungent” in his ear. He’ll either start giggling like Skeletor, or punch you in the stomach. It’ll make a good story either way. Listen to the Office Ladies episode here.

(Via Mashable)

Action Bronson has kept busy since his 2018 album White Bronco. He and The Alchemist collaborated on the Lamb Over Rice EP, he landed roles in The Irishman and King Of Staten Island, and he has shed nearly 100 pounds. Now, he’s getting ready for a new album. He dropped “Latin Grammys” in July, and today he announced his new album, Only For Dolphins.

Attentive fans may have seen the album title coming, as he rapped on White Bronco‘s “Mt. Etna,” “My next album’s only for dolphins.” Regardless, today’s news also comes with a new song, the reggae-inspired “Golden Eye.”

Bronson explained the name of his album, saying, “The dolphin is one of the most intelligent creatures ever created on whatever planet we’re on. They have their own way of communicating. They have nuance and intangibles like we do. […] The only people who understand me are those five-tool players, those higher beings who are on the same telepathic wave as me.”

Listen to “Golden Eye” above and check out the Only For Dolphins art and tracklist below.

1. “Capoeira” Feat. Yung Mehico
2. “C12H16N2”
3. “Latin Grammys”
4. “Golden Eye”
5. “Mongolia” Feat. Hologram and Meyhem Lauren
6. “Vega”
7. “Splash”
8. “Sergio”
9. “Shredder”
10. “Cliff Hanger”
11. “Marcus Aurelius”
12. “Hard Target”

Only For Dolphins is out 9/25 via Loma Vista Recordings.

Despite the pandemic shutting down most live venues, one area that’s seen an interesting change is the production of late-night television performances. Since the shows aren’t filming live anymore, stars have had to come up with creative solutions to the “live performance” problem in isolation — which has led to some stunning innovation.

Big Sean‘s performance of “Harder Than My Demons” from Detroit 2 on The Tonight Show is a sterling example of this effect, taking him from a replica living room (I’m guessing grandma’s house) to a God’s presence in the space of a couple minutes with some fancy camera work. Sean starts the performance seated on a couch surrounded by his homeboys before the stage lights black out allowing his lyrics to play out in isolated spots behind him — from grandma praying to the angel and demon arguing over his shoulders. The show concludes with Sean looking up into a spotlight representing the divine blessing from which the song borrows its theme.

As noted by host Jimmy Fallon, Detroit 2 shot to the top of iTunes’ albums list upon its release and is on track for a comfortable No. 1 berth on Billboard 200 next week, propelled by singles “Body Language,” “Deep Reverence,” “Don Life,” and “Lithuania.” Check it out here.

Watch Big Sean’s Tonight Show performance of “Harder Than My Demons” above.

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.

Detroit is such a fixture of Big Sean’s music — indeed, of his entire personality — it can almost seem to fade away in the deluge of off-pocket, multisyllabic, punchline-ridden bars that permeate his albums and songs. But if you close your eyes and cock your head, you can hear it. It pops out in periodic references to specific spots in the city or in Sean’s near constant shout-outs to its west side.

It’s so much a part of who he is, his consensus best project to date is named after the city. Now, nearly a decade later, he returns to that same creative wellspring in the form of a sequel project aimed at redeeming his last effort, 2017’s resignedly received I Decided. The trouble then was that, like his subliminal level love for his hometown, he was overshadowed by the busy production and buzzy guests. This time, Sean and his civic appreciation shine through.

For instance, on “Lucky Me,” one of the album’s early standouts, Sean gets even more personal than he ever has, revealing his aversion to Western medicine as a result of a misdiagnosis by doctors in his early adulthood. Then, when it comes time to pay homage to Motor City, he reminds listeners that “I don’t even have to say it, you know where I’m from.” He’s said it enough times that he doesn’t need to say it.

He gets personal again on the Nipsey Hussle collaboration “Deep Reverence,” revealing more details he felt he could never speak on before, from a miscarriage one of his relationships suffered to reaching out to Kendrick Lamar due to the supposed bad blood brewing between the two over K. Dot’s blistering “Control” verse nearly a decade ago. Although the e-streets seemed to want the two at each other’s throats after Kung-Fu Kenny hijacked Sean’s buzz single with his misinterpreted shout-outs, Sean reveals, “It wasn’t even no real issues there to begin with.” (Y’all really gotta learn what beef is and isn’t, still, 20 years after Biggie had to explain it. Get off my damn lawn.)

The spoken interludes from the original Detroit mixtape are back too, with a similar array of Sean’s influences speaking highly of the city and its residents. Dave Chappelle recounts the kind words of Sean’s father saving him after bombing a set there, Erykah Badu does what she does, filling her interlude with her urban mysticism, and Stevie Wonder(!!!!) praises the city as the birthplace of Motown Records, where he made some of soul music’s modern standards. Not only do they form an impressive guest list (seriously, STEVIE WONDER), but they also show Sean’s influences go far beyond what one might guess.

As far as guest lists go, one of the consensus weaker elements of Sean’s latter-day catalog is how he gets swallowed up by his bigger-name collaborations. Detroit 2 course corrects to the days when he could proudly stand alongside peers like J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar without coming up short. In fact, if anything, the big names here are the ones that feel sort of out of place, from Travis Scott on “Lithuania” to Young Thug on “Respect It” to Post Malone on “Wolves.” Fortunately, he also returns longtime collaborators like Earlly Mac, Lil Wayne, and Wale, with whom his chemistry is palpable.

But for the city after which the project is named, the highlight is “Friday Night Cypher.” While Sean has always paid so much homage to his hometown in his lyrics, he’s seemingly foregone reaching out to the city’s vibrant underground music community. Of course, shouting out Dilla is one thing — putting Tee Grizzly, Kash Doll, Sada Baby, Payroll, Boldly James, and 42 Dugg on a track with Eminem and Royce Da 5’9 is something else entirely. He’s also kind enough to stick the biggest name at the end, giving him ample space to roam for Shady fans and a convenient place to hit the skip button for everyone else.

Rappers love to make sequels of beloved projects, but in past years it’s felt more like a naming convention and an easy gimmick to boost interest. Rarely has it felt like a true full-circle moment where the rapper in question really does return to the mindset they were in when they recorded that old favorite — even when they do, how can they balance years of growth and experience with that refreshed mentality? Sean does an excellent job of laying down a blueprint with Detroit 2. Though it’s a little long, it sees him showing the foundation for his “came from nothing” raps, putting on for his city, and being a little vulnerable for once. He’s been famous for a long time — it’s nice to finally get to know who he really is.

Detroit 2 is out now via Def Jam Recordings. Get it here.

Hulu’s Woke is directed and executive produced by Maurice “Mo” Marable. The show’s in good comedic hands, given that Mo has multiple Brockmire seasons under his belt and has helmed episodes of It’s Always Sunny In Philadephia, Insecure, Lodge 49, The Last O.G., and frankly, too many more shows to name here. With Woke, though, Mo mines plenty of laughs from reality while adding elements of the surreal to underscore how absurd (and unavoidable) the Black experience in America can truly be.

Woke bases itself upon the work of artist Keith Knight. His likeness, Keef, is portrayed by Lamorne Morris (New Girl) as an up-and-coming Black cartoonist who wants to “keep it light” in terms of his art. In other words, he’d prefer not to have have his Toast -N- Butter characters (literally toast, butter, and so on) dig into the deeper issues that plague people of color in America. Yet one day, Keef receives a rude awakening while finding himself pinned to the ground by police officers who mistake him for a suspect. The experience transforms his perspective, as do the new voices that hope to spur him into action, which plays out in both straight-up funny and tragicomic ways.

Mo was cool enough to discuss the Hulu series with us, especially how so much of it parallels situations current and past. We also talked about how, in Mo’s words, HBO’s Watchmen “was the Blackest show in America,” and how scary it feels to get back to work in Hollywood, given our current situation.

So, there’s actually a Covid-19 reference in Woke. Talk about surreal.

You know, that was trippy because we wrote that before the COVID thing hit, but we didn’t write that line yet, and it was done in the moment. I think it had started to hit the news, but that was when it was just this thing way over somewhere else.

No one fully grasped at that point how massive the virus would become. When did you film that scene?

We filmed that scene in late February. Yeah, nobody knew then. We were shooting in Vancouver, and Vancouver has a very high Chinese population, and I have to say that community, when they’re traveling, have been wearing masks for a very long time. So, the idea of the mask and that something was happening, that was kind-of showing up in Vancouver but not as a disease, but just as a conversation, so we just tried to find a way to play with it.

Before I watched Woke and had only seen the trailer, I immediately thought of Atlanta because both blend magical realism with keeping it real about the Black experience in America. I learned that the two shows stand separately, but how would you explain what Woke does differently?

That is probably the best question I’ve had in a long time, so thank you for stumping me, Kim… Woke is a show that has political undertones but also is a real comedy because we want people to laugh, and we want people to think. And it’s got talking trashcans.

Don’t forget about that wisecracking ink pen. He’s pretty cool.

I don’t know too many shows that have talking trashcans, so I feel like we definitely check that box, and you know, as an artist and a filmmaker of color, we don’t get the opportunity often to do things that are magical or surreal or odd alternatives. Prior to nowadays, “alternatives” was more about attitude and not necessarily a full, weird internal experience, so that’s where I think our show is different.

There are a lot of people who, like Keef, want to “keep it light” with everything we’re going through right now. How do you read that statement from him?

I think when you hear, especially from people of color, “I just wanna keep it light,” it’s hard to say what’s in that individual’s heart. But I’ve definitely been in that space at times, where I do just wanna keep it light, and I just don’t wanna deal with the heaviness of what’s going on. And the truth is that, for all of us out here in the world, there’s so much negative happening right now that it can be overwhelming. And it’s it own bit of trauma, so sometimes you need to step back and shut it out and find joy elsewhere. So I understand that moment, but I think in Keef’s situation, I think he really believes it. Like, “There’s somebody else who does that, somebody else does the heavy stuff, somebody who does the sports stuff, I just wanna keep it light, I don’t wanna be put in the box, like just because I’m Black, I have to say something political.” I get that. I think that’s honest, and that’s real.

And then Keef receives a jolt, and he couldn’t avoid waking up.

When something like this happens to you, it activates him, and he has to say something about it because when you don’t you’re not really an artist. I can’t even remember the quote, but Nina Simone has talked about that. Like, it is your job, as an artist, to basically be political.

Unfortunately, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that police would behave as absurdly as they do in Woke. This year, Black Lives Matter protested the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. This follows protests over the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Terence Crutcher, and more. Was this show always bound to be timely?

You know, the sad reality is that this show would have been timely 30, 40, 10 years ago, and 5 months ago, and unless there’s a major shift, it will be timely 10 years from now. The events that have been happening, and that we’ve been watching on TV — the killing of George Floyd, I believe, is one of those rare moments in history where everybody’s in their house. There’s a pandemic going on, people are not working, and everybody feels at siege. The country’s already divided, and so when that happens, I think people just lost it, and it was one killing too many at that moment.

People are exhausted and frightened this year but still feel compelled to protest.

The truth is that this has been a recurring nightmare for Black men and Black people for decades, and I think no matter when this show came out, there was gonna be somebody dying at the hands of police brutality.

You talked about this going on for so many decades, which reminds me of how it took HBO’s Watchmen for a lot of people to learn about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Oh, you just brought up one of my favorite shows of all time! I have so much respect for Damon Lindelof. I mean, first of all, that show was so good, and it really got the heart of it. This is the truth. I’ve heard about the Tulsa Race Massacre and Black Wall Street and all that, but I didn’t know all the details because no one really teaches that to you. You don’t really hear about it. And man, the idea that the first superhero was a person of color and why he chose to do that? I once read an article about how billionaires being these vigilantes doesn’t make any sense. They can buy the courts, they can change the law. They can do that. Real superheroes come from marginalized communities.

Lindelof pulled off radical feats. He rewrote a Black character into history, rather than the other way around, which was the opposite of how the Tulsa went down.

Yes, that’s why he made Hooded Justice Black, and to talk about reparations and to talk about what that does to a community, to nations. To talk about systemic racism. All of it was so pitch-perfect and beautiful at the same time. My favorite episode was in black-and-white, where [Angela] experiences her grandfather’s life, and I just thought it was the Blackest show in America.

I still marvel at how Doctor Manhattan was just hiding out in a Black man’s body.

Yeah, who’s gonna look at the Black guy and think that he’s the most brilliant person in the entire galaxy?

We do need Manhattan to fix things, but I’m still fixated on all the timely parallels in Woke. Like with one of Keef’s friends, who is white. He hasn’t done something truly reprehensible, like Kyle Rittenhouse, but the show illustrates how white men are treated differently by police, as opposed to Jacob Black and Keef.

I hope it’s a topic of conversation — the idea of how people treat people of color and people not of color totally different. You know, how you just stated. It’s so evident, it’s so real. I remember being in high school, and there were kids who were so drunk, seriously drunk, and it was in a Pizza Hut parking lot. The cops rolled up on them, and all they did was decide who was not that drunk and let that person drive home.

Wow. That reminds me of a recent Twitter thread of police encounters experienced by white people. Let’s just say they lacked confrontation.

Yeah, me and my friends were sitting across the street and were just stunned. And so you look at that, and then you think about [Rayshard Brooks] who got shot and killed in Atlanta. Why didn’t they let him walk it off? He’s human. He isn’t committing a serious crime, he’s truly not. But the idea that fear of skin color is enough to sentence somebody to murder is crazy.

Woke also touches upon people who launch protests about their own pet causes while looking past police brutality.

That was a tough episode. A lot had to happen on that bus, and diving into the idea that people of color are not always worth saving, right? Somebody could kill a tiger in Africa, and the whole world is up in arms. Somebody kills a person of color, and it’s a news cycle for a week. We wanted to touch on that hypocrisy, to touch on “Who is humanity for? Who’s allowed to have empathy? Who do we give our empathy to, and why? And why not to people of color? Why is it that Black folks don’t get to be human?”

We’re almost out of time, but beyond Woke, you’ve got several directing gigs in the near future, for NBC, Disney, Hulu, and FX. How’s the timing looking on those in regard to the pandemic?

I call it the “Wild Wild West” out there right now. Nobody knows how this is all gonna work it, but I will say that I’m working on an NBC show right now from home, and I’ll shoot that in early October, and then I’ll follow that immediately by shooting for NBC. And then hopefully, everything else will fall into place in the new year. But it’s a little scary going back to work. There’s no vaccine, and I don’t know if I’d take the vaccine in the first batch anyway. So it’s gonna be different.

Putting everything in a bubble might be difficult. Tyler Perry is doing it, though. He’s doing better than The Batman production, I’ll say that much.

Now, that freaked me out last night. I was like, “Whaaaaat?”

Oh, it’s scary. When the leading man gets it, what do you do? Damn.

How many people are now infected by that, and how did he get it? I gotta go back and read the story, but that scares me. It makes me nervous about the shows I’m working on, but I will say that, so far, all the protocols that have been laid out to me by NBC have been really strong. I believe that I have to be tested every day in order to work. And… thank you for giving Woke a voice.

Hulu’s ‘Woke’ streams on Wednesday, September 9.

Drake is no longer hiding the world from his kid, becoming the kind of dad who posts his son’s finger-painting on his Instagram and puts up with the internet memes at his expense as a result. Fortunately for him, the hype from Pusha T’s battle rap reveal has died down so he can get back to being an involved parent and apparently proud pop. His latest Adonis-centric post sees the now three-year-old prepared for his first day of school, complete with a fit that his dad would wear and freshly braided cornrows. Drake captioned the photo “The World Is Yours kid.”

Now that his son’s out of the house, though, hopefully Drake has time to finish his upcoming album — rumored to be titled “Certified Lover Boy” — which his engineer said was “90 percent done” about a month ago. He certainly seems to be in album promotion mode, releasing the hilarious video for his Lil Durk-featuring single “Laugh Now Cry Later” and releasing an album merchandise line in collaboration with Nike. Of course, his plans for release have seemingly been curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic, which kept him in Canada for his and DJ Khaled’s “Popstar” video, but he found a clever workaround there, so maybe that new music isn’t so far off after all.

Since the first Academy Award for Best Actress was handed out in 1929, only one Black woman has won the award: Halle Berry for her performance in Monster’s Ball. That’s it. Gwyneth Paltrow has many Oscars as every Black woman in Hollywood history! The same year Berry starred in Monster’s Ball, she was also in Die Another Day, one of the biggest hits of 2002. She should have been on the A-list, up there with Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, and other white guys not named Tom, but instead, there was Catwoman, and Gothika, and voicing a robot named Cappy (not to be confused with Chappie) in Robots. She wasn’t intentionally making terrible movies — they were the only roles being offered.

“I think it’s largely because there was no place for someone like me,” Berry told Variety. “I thought, ‘Oh, all these great scripts are going to come my way; these great directors are going to be banging on my door.’ It didn’t happen. It actually got a little harder. They call it the Oscar curse. You’re expected to turn in award-worthy performances.” The John Wick: Chapter 3 star called winning the Oscar one of her “biggest heartbreaks”:

“The morning after, I thought, ‘Wow, I was chosen to open a door.’ And then, to have no one… I question, ‘Was that an important moment, or was it just an important moment for me?’ I wanted to believe it was so much bigger than me. It felt so much bigger than me, mainly because I knew others should have been there before me and they weren’t. Just because I won an award doesn’t mean that, magically, the next day, there was a place for me.”

Berry was cast in Moonfall, a Roland Emmerich-helmed sci-fi epic also starring Patrick Wilson, Josh Gad, and numerous explosions, but she also made her directorial debut in Bruised. The sports drama, about a disgraced MMA fighter (also played by Berry), has its world premiere later this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.

(Via Variety)