Category: Viral

Over the weekend, Logic released what is ostensibly his final album as a rapper, No Pressure, and it appears to receiving plenty of love as an appropriate swan song for the oft-misunderstood rapper. While the fan chatter is generally positive, one co-sign is sure to draw more attention to the project. LeBron James, whose stamp of approval has helped launch viral stars into the spotlight and landed him an executive production credit on 2 Chainz’s last album, is apparently loving Logic’s curtain call.

The NBA superstar, who is currently living it up in the NBA’s “bubble” in Orlando ahead of the league’s impending resumption, posted a screenshot of his Apple Music play screen to his Instagram Story while we was listening to track 13, “Heard Em Say.” He captioned the photo: “Morning music vibes by my G Logic. Hate to see you go bro but damn you left in great fashion.” Logic himself took a screenshot of the story and posted it to his own grid, remarking, “The king has spoken.”

The co-sign will likely help Logic feel better about his decision to give up rap — although the seven-figure deal he signed with Twitch to stream video games probably also makes for a nice retirement plan.

No Pressure is out now via Def Jam Recordings and Visionary Music Group. Get it here.

Call Me By Your Name (2017) will eventually see a sequel (also starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer), but before that happens, director Luca Guadagnino has a new HBO limited series that’s coming this fall. From the looks of this trailer, this show will likely do what the movie did (illuminate the value of human connection in another Italian-set romance) during a time when audiences need it most. We can also use another life-affirming story from Guadagnino, so let’s hope that’s the case here.

With the teaser announcement, HBO also revealed Kid Cudi’s role, that of a father to Jordan Kristine Seamón’s Caitlin, who appears to be an anchoring presence for U.S. Army brats on a Veneto base. The series stars Jack Dylan Grazer as the introverted Fraser, who transplants to the base with his two mothers (played by Chloë Sevigny and Alice Braga). The teaser reveals numerous beach shots and suggestions of complicated dynamics between the characters, and Francesca Scorsese will portray “an outspoken, witty, sexually uninhibited girl,” according to HBO. From the synopsis:

A story about two American kids who live on a U.S. military base in Italy, the series explores friendship, first-love, identity, and immerses the audience in all the messy exhilaration and anguish of being a teenager – a story which could happen anywhere in the world, but in this case, happens in this little slice of America in Italy.

We Are Who We Are — which also stars Spence Moore II, Ben Taylor, Corey Knight, Tom Mercier and Sebastiano Pigazzi — will debut on HBO on September 14 (and also stream on HBO Max).

Continuity has never been Family Guy‘s strong suit (Peter continues to live even after this Mortal Kombat-influenced fatality), but one thing that has been kept mostly consistent through 300-plus episodes: Peter, Lois, Chris, and Meg not being able to understand Stewie. There have been some questionable exemptions to this rule, like this exchange about Peter not having seen The Godfather, but for the most part, the only one who talks with Stewie is Brian. I’m not going to question the internal logic of a talking dog conversing with a one-year old, and neither should you. Besides, it’s led to some of the best episodes of Family Guy, including series highlight “Back to the Pilot.”

But Stewie’s first words will be canonized in the season 19 premiere, as revealed during Family Guy‘s Comic-Con@Home panel over the weekend. The episode, fittingly titled “Stewie’s First Word,” has the Griffins attending church, where a pastor informs everyone, “In honor of Lent, today’s coffee service will not include chewy Chips Ahoy.” Stewie’s red-faced response to this shocking there-is-no-God news: “F*CK.”

Or as the closed captions have it:

Not only does everyone in church turn to look at Stewie (who doesn’t express his disgust with his “real” voice), Chris confirms, “Hey, Stewie said his first word. And it was a swear.” Thanks Chris, as helpful as ever. Family Guy returns on September 27 with a new actor (fingers crossed for Wendell Pierce) as the voice of Cleveland.

In recent times, The Weeknd has made his animation dreams come true. He co-wrote and starred in an episode of American Dad that premiered recently, and he got to voice a few characters in last night’s episode of the long-running Adult Swim series Robot Chicken.

The characters that The Weeknd got to play were a host at an illegal dinosaur auction, a S.W.A.T. team member who raids said auction, and Tyler Perry’s character Madea, who gets cut in half in prison by Deadpool.

The Weeknd previously spoke with Variety about his Robot Chicken appearance, saying it came about because Joel Hurwitz, with whom he co-wrote his American Dad episode, is also a writer on Robot Chicken: “I want to continue to create different Weeknds in alternate universes. There weren’t many challenges, as the acting was pretty straightforward. I told Joel I loved doing voices and wished I could have challenged myself more in that department, so he took me to the Robot Chicken studio, where [series co-creator] Seth Green was waiting for me. I totally geeked out and he actually let me do multiple voices on an episode coming out soon. The cartoon nerd in me jumped out that day.”

In a more recent interview, he said he preferred the experience of being on Robot Chicken to that of American Dad because he wasn’t voicing himself, saying he hated playing “The Weeknd”: “I hated it. I actually hated it, because when I think about cartoons you have characters. With Robot Chicken, I got to be other characters, so it didn’t point back to me. I’d rather disguise my voice.”

Watch clips of The Weeknd’s appearances on Robot Chicken below.

Throughout his career, Jpegmafia has been prone to releasing non-album singles between projects. He has taken that to another level in 2020, though, as the rapper has shared seven loose songs this year: “Bald!,” “Covered In Money!,” “Bodyguard!,” “Cutie Pie!,” “The Bends!,” “Rough 7,” and now his latest, “Living Single.”

On the track, Jpegmafia discusses how he doesn’t involve himself with the gang imagery found in some hip-hop: “All these n**** screamin’, ‘Gang,’ scared to get jumpin’ / N**** them pistols on yo ‘Gram s’posed to be tucked in / Chill, watch and observe, Peggy don’t say nothin’ / Let ’em stay frontin’.” He also discusses his independence and passion for music, with lines like, “Check my BMI, lil’ b*tch, I am the sole owner / I need royalties, not loyalties, to fill my quota,” and, “Dark skinned and givin’ out work, I feel like Kelly Rowland / I don’t need no therapy, beats give me consolin’.”

Like Jpegmafia’s recent videos, the one for “Living Single” is self-directed. The clip mostly features the rapper vibing along with the song in nighttime environments, lit joint in hand.

Jpegmafia was also a guest on a recent episode of People’s Party, on which he posited that rap fans don’t appreciate producers as much as they should.

Watch the “Living Single” video above.

Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight was centered on the Uighur concentration camps in China (watch the segment here), but host John Oliver also took some time to condemn Donald Trump and Fox News’ dishonest coverage of the Portland protests.

“The protests in Portland have actually been going on daily for nearly two months now, since the killing of George Floyd,” Oliver said. “But the deployment of federal agents was a sharp escalation of questionable legality, and yet, to hear the president tell it, he had no choice and it was a terrific idea.” The exact words Donald Trump used to praise the federal officers he sent to Portland to squash the peaceful protests were “great job,” which is also how he described his response to the coronavirus in early May, thousands and thousands of deaths ago. That should be a warning sign to everyone.

“OK, first: It’s never good when Trump says he’s doing a ‘great job,’ given that he thinks his administration is doing a ‘great job’ dealing with the coronavirus, and he once proclaimed Ben Affleck would do a ‘great job’ as Batman. Clearly, this man has no sense of what a ‘great job’ actually looks like,” Oliver said, referring to this immortal tweet.

He must’ve felt very conflicted when Pattinson was picked as the next Batman.

Oliver also singled out Hannity, who has been accused of sexual harassment, and his deceitful portrayal of the “insane” protests. “Yeah, it is insane,” he said. “Because that tone does not honestly reflect the conditions on the ground.” Watch the segment here.

(Via the Daily Beast)

Post Malone is music’s most fervent ambassador for the time-honored game of beer pong. Heck, he even went and played the party game with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show last year. The rapper might be getting ready to mix business and pleasure, though: TMZ reports that Malone has filed a trademark for the name “World Pong League.”

The filing reportedly says that World Pong League would “operate official beer pong tournaments, competitions, events, and exhibitions,” and would also have merch printed on virtually any sell-able item you can name. The idea for this endeavor apparently came from Malone and his manager Dre London, but is so far only in its early stages.

Malone has a long and storied history of enthusiasm for beer pong. He’s been tweeting about it as far back as 2014. Near the end of 2019, Malone challenged Tyla Yaweh to a game ahead of a concert, and emerged from the contest $50,000 richer. Earlier this year, he also took some time to play some pong on Adult Swim, which prompted Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong to tell the world that the first game of beer pong he ever played was with Post Malone.

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

Three years ago, the creator of The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman, jumped ship at AMC — against which he suffered a setback in a high-profile lawsuit last week — for a production deal over on Amazon. Kirkman, whose credits also obviously include Fear the Walking Dead and The World Beyond, in addition to the underrated Outcast on Cinemax, is making good on that production deal with Amazon with an animated series based on his second longest-running comic, Invincible.

Invincible, which ran for 144 issues between 2003 and 2017, is about a teenager named Mark Grayson, who is normal except for the fact that his father is the most powerful superhero on the planet. Around Mark’s seventh birthday, he develops superpowers of his own, which makes his teenage years challenging. Veteran animation writer Simon Racioppa (The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance) is set to run the series.

Meanwhile, during his Comic-Con@Home virtual panel this past weekend, Robert Kirkman announced six new additions to the voice cast from the world of The Walking Dead: Lauren Cohan, who will play War Woman; Chad Coleman as Martian Man; Michael Cudlitz as Red Rush; Lennie James will play Darkwing; Ross Marquand is set to voice The Immortal & Aquarius; and Sonequa Martin-Green joins the series as Green Ghost. Those six current and former The Walking Dead cast members join two others who have already been cast, Khary Payton as Black Samson, and Steven Yeun, who plays the character, Mark Grayson.

In addition to the heavy The Walking Dead presence, the rest of the voice cast is down right phenomenal: J. K. Simmons as Grayson’s father, Nolan; Sandra Oh as Debbie Grayson; Mark Hamill as Art Rosebaum; Seth Rogen as Allen the Alien; and Gillian Jacobs as Atom Eve. Additionally, the voice cast includes Andrew Rannels, Zazie Beetz, Walton Goggins, Jason Mantzoukas, Zachary Quinto, and Mae Whitman, among others.

Seth Rogen, who is in the voice cast, was at one point attached to co-write and co-direct a feature film version of Invincible for Universal Pictures, but it is unclear what happened to that project.

Meanwhile, for The Walking Dead fans who missed it, the series will return on October 4th with the 16th episode of the season, while Angela Kang has announced an additional 6 The Walking Dead season 10 episodes set to air in 2021. The World Beyond will premiere afterward on October 4th, while Fear the Walking Dead is set to return the next week on October 11th. The Talking Dead will air each week, as well.

This past weekend saw San Diego Comic Con rework their annual shindig for an at-home quarantine world, and things seemed to go swimmingly. There were Zoom panels galore, a ton of trailers and first looks, and, of course, Keanu Reeves. There were also some virtual panels that weren’t a part of SDCC at all. There was one for Rick and Morty as well as one for Netflix’s dearly departed Daredevil. Entitled #SaveDaredevil, it was intended to exhume the show, which was cancelled in 2018 when Marvel was setting up shop at its future home, Disney+.

There was one disturbing revelation made during the virtual panel, though, as per Entertainment Weekly. Peter Shinkoda played the character of Nobu, a member of super-villain organization The Hand over nine episodes. He claims former Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb told the writers room not to give Nobu nor Madame Gao, played by Wai Ching Ho, backstories, because, he allegedly told them, “nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people.”

Shinkoda said he as “reluctant” to break the news, but seemed to eventually talk himself into doing it, even at the risk of possible backlash. “I’m not into really protecting certain things anymore,” Shinkoda told the virtual crowd. He then soldiered on:

“Jeph Loeb told the writers’ room not to write for Nobu and Gao — and this was reiterated many times by many of the writers and showrunners — that nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people. There were three previous Marvel movies, a trilogy called Blade that was made where Wesley Snipes kills 200 Asians each movie. Nobody gives a s—, so don’t write about Nobu and Gao, so they were forced to put their storyline down and drop it.”

Shinkoda said the writers were at one point considering exploring Nobu’s journey to America, which would involve Gao. “All that backstory was dropped,” Shinkoda calimed. “The writers told me they regret it and they were reluctant to do it because they were stoked about including that in the storyline but they were prevented so I had to concoct this other storyline and rock that material I was given.”

Under Loeb’s watch, Marvel produced such shows as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Legion, Jessica Jones, Runaways, and more. One of them, Iron First, came under fire for the representation of Asian characters. Loeb has of this writing not publicly addressed the allegations.

(Via EW)

There are a lot of billionaires in the world, but few as colorful as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The same weekend the entrepreneur appeared to possibly enrage his wife, Grimes, over a cryptic tweet about pronouns, a New York Times profile with him was released, in which, among other things, he threatened to throw it down with Johnny Depp over allegations he made about the latter’s ex, Amber Heard.

Musk’s name came up during Depp’s London trial, in which the actor is suing the British Tabloid The Sun, which labeled him a “wife-beater” in an April 2018 article. Heard has had to appear in court as well, and numerous, sometimes scandalous details have emerged about their marriage, with both parties accusing each other of forms of abuse. Musk briefly dated Heard after their split, but Depp claimed they’d hooked up while the two were still wed. Not so, said Musk.

“I definitely was not having an affair with Amber while she was married to Johnny, this is totally false,” Mr. Musk told the NYT. He also shot down another accusation: that he’d had a threesome with Heard and her friend Cara Delevingne. “We did not have the threesome, you know. So I think people think these things are generally more salacious than they are.”

As for another revelation — that Depp referred to him, unflatteringly, as “Mollusk” — Musk reportedly chuckled, then added, “Well, yeah, I hope he recovers from this situation.” What he didn’t take too kindly to was a text from Depp to Heard, in which the actor threatened to slice off the mogul’s nether-regions. That crossed a line.

“If Johnny wants a cage fight, just let me know,” Musk replied. It’s not clear how serious he was; the NYT described his response as “mischievous” and that he broke “into his famous giggle.”

Musk also had some sage advice for Depp and Heard. “For the two of them,” he said. “I would just recommend that they bury the hatchet and move on.”

So it’s unlikely that humanity will be gifted with a Depp-Musk tussle, possibly beamed on pay-per-view. Then again, we do appear to be trapped in the weirdest timeline.

(Via The New York Times)