Comedian Rory Scovel is poised for a breakout, taking the creative reigns and lead role inRobbie, a freshly launched, bingeable series available through Comedy Central’s website and YouTube channel. In the show, Scovel, who you may know from his past comedy specials and his always attention-getting late-night sets, plays a youth basketball coach in the South who is locked in dysfunctional relationships with his coaching icon father, the basketball prodigy son he just found out about, and the idea of adulthood and success.
For our Uproxx 20 series, Scovel repped the south’s best breakfast sandwich (don’t @ me), offered advice to his younger self that we could all stand to take heed of, and let it be known that the best kind of meal to make for Nic Cage is a slow burning one. 1. You walk into a bar. What do you order from the bartender?
Negroni.
2. Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?
At this point, Christine And The Queens is used to performing songs from home. The French singer was one of the first to begin hosting nightly livestreams on Instagram when the coronavirus quarantine began in mid-March. Now, Christine is getting creative with her living room performances. The singer decided to change up her scenery as she belted a rendition of a track from her recently-released EP on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
Perched on the sill of her large apartment window, Christine soulfully sang “People, I’ve Been Sad.” The lead single from her EP La Vita Nuova, the track’s instrumentals played over Christine’s live vocals and she delivered each lyric, which has taken on new meanings in quarantine. “It’s just that me, myself and I / Been missing out for way too long / Been taking calls I should have missing out / Forsaking things for way too long,” Christine lilted.
Ahead of her performance on The Late Show, Christine has been performing covers from her living room. The singer gave a synth-heavy rendition of The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights.” Christine also shared an apt cover of Travis Scott’s “Highest In The Room” on 4/20. Pivoting from popular music, the singer recently performed Niel Young’s classic hit “Heart Of Gold.”
Watch Christine And The Queens perform “People, I’ve Been Sad” on The Late Show above.
La Vita Nuova is out now via Because Music. Get it here.
Previously on Total Bellas: Nikki made an unhinged vision board for Artem, and Brie and Bryan struggled with not having the same vision for their marriage.
Was There Anything About Wrestling On This Week’s Episode Of Total Bellas?
Nope, wrestling was not even mentioned. The closest this episode got to a wrestling connection was the Bella Twins hosting a Temptation Island premiere party. Remember how WWE also advertised Temptation Island for a while and we got the Naomi/Mandy Rose/Jey Uso angle out of it? Anyway, that really isn’t close to a wrestling connection at all. Daniel Bryan will be back next week though!
Deep Drunkers
This episode, “Salsa Caliente,” proves that the power of Temptation Island extends beyond the island of temptation (?), with an episode-dominating storyline that’s partly about Nikki getting drunk at work, partly about Artem revealing his jealous side, and all about the Nikki-and-Artem honeymoon period coming to an end.
Nikki has seemed like the way more invested half of her relationship in episodes past, but this week’s drama kicked off with Artem taking some romantic initiative and saying they should have a date night. The reason they haven’t had one in a while is that Nikki’s been busy with work, so obviously they plan to go dancing right after Nikki and Brie host the premiere party for Temptation Island. (This whole storyline might just be oddly-timed product placement for
Temptation Island.)
We don’t actually see what happened at the party because the cameras weren’t there, but we here, slightly Rashomon style, from Brie and Artem about how Nikki got completely smashed (accidentally, Nikki says later) and started getting friendly with some guy. Artem shows up to the party to pick up his girlfriend and finds her super drunk and palling around with some random guy and saying they should hang out with him. He decides to deal with this situation by just leaving Nikki at the party venue, and that’s what triggers the real fight.
You can tell ahead of time that no one’s going to come out of this fight looking good. Nikki is too drunk to see how annoying she’s acting. What she sees as jealousy by Artem unleashes a nasty mean streak and everything she says clearly hurts Artem’s feelings. The most uncomfortable thing about the situation might be that Artem keeps trying to talk to Nikki as if they’re both sober when it looks like she might not even remember this in the morning. Eventually he tells the camera crew to stop filming, but it seems like if they creating content for TV and he had half a brain, he would have bowed out of the fight earlier.
After all this, plus some crazy text messages that didn’t make TV, the scene where Nikki and Artem talk about what happened might be the most they’ve ever seemed like a real couple. Artem explains that he was upset because he showed up to hang out with Nikki and she was already in her own drunk person world; Nikki reveals that a partner displaying jealous behavior really sets her off because of some past relationships. They come to the conclusion that they can’t take back what happened, but they can move on.
I don’t come away from this episode completely convinced that these people have a viable future or are really in love or right for each other, but I could be convinced that they want to stick together. As we take a big step forward on The Road To Both Bella Twins Being Pregnant At The Same Time at the end of this episode, it seems like Brie and Kathy both have basically the same position.
Muy Perra
The other, way more boring storyline this week was Brie trying to get JJ to get on board with the twins’ mission to get in touch with their Mexican heritage. Nikki and Brie wanting to reconnect with their dad and their Latin side has been the focal point of previous episodes this season, but here, it feels like Total Bellas is exploring the least compelling part of that story (JJ) in order to fill time. Brie tries to pressure JJ into this very personal thing, but it turns out JJ is comfortable with his current relationship with his roots and just finds this irritating. At least we get a some cute Birdie content out of this, and the Bellas attempting to sass each other in freshman-tier Spanish.
Oh, Baby!
The Nikki-Artem storyline drama resolves weirdly early in the episode, and the reason for that is revealed when Nikki makes a big reveal to Kathy. Nikki has been having cravings, and is two weeks late on her period and seems both sure she’s pregnant and in total denial about it so she doesn’t have to deal with it. Kathy’s “Oh my god, you kids stress the f*ck out of me,” is very much earned here. Kathy later brings Nikki a pregnancy test, spills the beans to Brie, and we’re about to find out what happens when Nikki pees on a stick when Artem enters the room, and the episode is over. It’s a cliffhanger, and I’m not sure if a positive test in this situation counts as falling off the cliff or returning to solid ground.
Bella Line Of The Week
It’s kind of hilarious how much Brie and Kathy immediately do not trust Nikki’s future parenting skills, and Brie delivers the harshest line about it: “I’m not going to adopt your child like I did your dog.” It’s really not unfathomable that the central question of Total Bellas season 6 could end up being “Can Nikki Bella take care of a human baby?”
With no actual sports to speak of, we have to use every opportunity we can get to reminisce about the good old days when we could still go outside and whatnot. For instance, Thursday marked the 18th anniversary of Allen Iverson’s infamous practice rant, which prompted SportsCenter to do a whole Top 10 on the best sports rants in history.
Iverson’s volatile press conference takes the cake, and though it’s become something of a punchline over the years, it’s easy to forget the proper context for that moment, as it came on the heels of both a close friend’s murder and an ongoing fight with Larry Brown about Iverson’s future with the franchise.
Still, Iverson has shown he has a sense of humor about the whole thing over the years, at various points poking fun at himself and the whole situation. But he took that to a new height on Thursday when he used the opportunity to remind us all about why it’s important to keep a safe distance from one another as we all quarantine during the COVID-19 crisis.
The wording here might be a little fuzzy, given the context of the quote. Read one way, you could interpret it as mocking the idea of social distancing in the way he was mocking the notion of practice being a worthwhile topic of discussion. But the hashtags #StayHome and #StaySafe indicate otherwise.
So, you heard it here. Listen to Allen Iverson, stay safe out there, and if you go outside, make sure you keep at least six feet away from others.
Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber just dropped their collaborative “Stuck With U” video, in which they work with far more people than just themselves. The video is a compilation of clips from fans and celebrities enjoying their lives at home. In just the first few seconds, we get appearances from Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Michael Bublé, Modern Family‘s Eric Stonestreet, and more. Carole Baskin, of Tiger King fame, tried to get involved in the project, but Grande refused to allow that.
Before the video came out, Bieber previewed a clip of Baskin (and her husband Howard Baskin) dancing to the song, and Grande quickly clarified that the video did not make the final “Stuck With U” visual, tweeting, “for the record, i did not allow or approve this clip to be in the actual video. but. nonetheless. it exists and that’s ….. unique. anyway, 7.5 hours !” A fan responded with delight to Grande’s tweet, and she answered, “i am very glad someone is laughing [crying emoji] the f*cking heart attacks i had over this.”
Meanwhile, shortly before the video dropped, Bieber tweeted, “Excited to be singing with you @ArianaGrande.” Grande responded, “me too ! it has been a long time comin and i’m so glad we waited so patiently for this. it feels so special. love u, my friend.”
me too ! it has been a long time comin and i’m so glad we waited so patiently for this. it feels so special. love u, my friend. #stuckwithu 1 hour ! https://t.co/43TGbVZVlO
2019 was a hell of a year for Kim Petras. Releasing her first full-length project, Clarity, via the rather unconventional strategy of sharing a new track every week, Kim went from opening for rising pop stars like Troye Sivan at the Greek Theater at the end of 2018, to headlining a set at the Shrine Auditorium herself just a year later. And despite the sh*t show that 2020 has turned out to be, with fear and anxiety mounting due to concerns about the pandemic, the 27-year-old pop star is more determined than ever to keep putting out music that’s a distraction and a relief from the worst parts of the outside world.
Releasing her latest, sunshine-y single “Malibu” yesterday to kick off her next era, Petras is clearly entering a phase that will contain some of her most upbeat and brightest work yet. “I just hope it makes people forget about everything that’s going on right now and just takes them into this little pop bubble,” she said of the track, when we spoke over the phone earlier this week. “I hope everybody’s staying safe and sane, I just wish everybody all the best and I’m sending so much love.”
“Malibu” is definitely a love letter of a song, featuring big, bombastic synths and a golden era pop sound that evokes what Kim calls the “superstar-feeling pop” sound. It’s imperial in tone, and breathless in feeling, and a complete 180 from the dark, trap-inflected pop she was leaning toward on Clarity. As the lead track off what will be her formal debut album, “Malibu” sets the bar high, and is the perfect escapist fantasy to lose track of reality inside. While observing the to safer-at-home ordinances in LA as much as possible these past few weeks, I absolutely had to take my car for a quick spin around the block just to hear this in full cruise mode — it’s a perfect soundtrack for that, and a reminder that a more light-hearted future exists out there, somewhere.
Calling me from her own personal quarantine, Kim took the time to break down the timeline of the writing this song — it was actually one of the first tracks she wrote — and what to expect from her upcoming new era, along with how she’s built her career as an independent artist running her own label. Read a condensed and edited version of our conversation below.
What was your headspace when you were writing “Malibu”? Because tonally and sonically it feels a lot different from the Clarity era.
I wrote the initial demo three years ago actually, before I ever put anything out. And ever since then I’ve just been trying to get this song right. With my lyricist, my best friend Aaron who I’m also quarantined with, back in the days we would just write a million songs. So, it just never really came up again. But then friends of mine would be like “Where’s ‘Malibu?’ I love that song!” And people would start hearing about it and I’d get all kinds of questions about it.
So we were like, all right, we’re going to try and get this right and write a new version and write a new riff, and we did and it just started felt really perfect, and felt like exactly what I wanted to do next. Because I don’t feel heartbroken anymore, I feel like I got that out of my system with Clarity. I just wanted to make a song that makes me feel good and makes me want to dance. And make me feel like an ’80s superstar. This is the kind of song that reminds me of Prince and MJ and it reminds me of early Madonna stuff, and Cyndi Lauper and that’s my favorite kind of music.
We got the song down and it sounded like the perfect first single for my next, real first album. We always called Clarity a project and not an album, so now it’s time for a debut album. Especially putting it out now, because I really feel like it’s going to make people feel like they’ve just been to the beach, and make people forget about the bad things that are happening for like three and a half minutes. I couldn’t ask for better timing for this to come out.
I love how it’s such a feeling of escapism. That’s what I always turn to pop music for. What is your own relationship to Malibu itself?
I actually wrote it when I had never really been to anything else but the beach in Malibu. And my imagination of it was so great, but then I was like, ‘Wait, it’s just a bunch of rich people living by the ocean.’ I wanted to write a song about my imagination of it and how I wanted it to feel — I think I just haven’t been to Malibu with the right people. But this song is an ode to my imagination, like how Malibu looks on TV, to somebody who’s from Germany and how it seems in the movies and stuff like that. So it’s really romantic because I’m comparing love to my dream version of Malibu, that’s what the song is all about to me. But I would love for people to make it about anything they want to make it about.
I love that. What else can you tell us about your next era and what “Malibu” is previewing as far as your next body of work?
I feel like it’s a new sound for me. I’m definitely going into that direction of, like, superstar-feeling pop. I’m really excited to make my debut album a concept album. I’ve been working on songs and I’m really excited about this next chapter. I already have the title, and I know what I want it to be, and I definitely don’t want it to be sad. Like this one is not going to be sad. But I think I’m going to be showing a lot of sides that people don’t know about me and also I think vocally, I’ve never been stronger. I’ve never been more capable of high notes and different personas and different tones. I just feel really free now. I’m going to make the music that I started out making music for, now. I think “Malibu” is the first taste of that. And a very exciting first taste to me because it’s the first single. So all my focus right now is going on to “Malibu” and that song, and I think it’s my best song yet, so I’m really excited about it.
Let’s talk a little bit about the impact that releasing Clarity had on your career last year. It was such a high-profile project for you, and it really put you on the map for people who maybe hadn’t heard you yet. How did releasing that project shift things for you?
I’m an independent artist, so for me, really the best way to do this, that I figured out — and I think I was one of the first to figure out — was putting out a monthly song. It’s really amazing what that can do for an independent artist. And I would encourage everybody to do the same thing. I think as a new artist, you can’t make a classic album with a full cycle or anything like that because you don’t have a fan base and you can’t get people excited about you if you don’t have that loyal fan base.
I’ve been so blessed that I did kind of find that right away when I dropped “I Don’t Want It At All.” But my hit is my entire discography, you know? It’s not like there’s one song that made me break through. It’s all the songs combined, it’s constantly putting out stuff and putting up 48 songs over the last few years nonstop. I felt like it was really cool, dropping a song a week with Clarity and it just snowballed so hard. It just helped me to get to this point, and now I’m finally at the point where I can say, ‘Okay, I’m going to put out my debut album and my first legit rollout.’
Not that I’m not going to be releasing songs in an unconventional way, because I love doing that, and I think that that’s honestly the future of music. And for the audience — I think it’s really great for the fans. But I just, I just feel like it’s all been a perfect storm to this point. You know, now I have a fan base, I need to really do the damn thing. For me everything was just building until this point. I just think these days, there’s no guarantees for anything and all you can do as an artist is constantly put out good music and I feel really proud of what I’ve done. But this still feels kind of different. It just feels like a moment for me with this song.
You already started touching on this, but I would love to talk about the fact that you’re a pop star who is also running an independent label with BunHead — which has become a little bit more common, but it’s still pretty groundbreaking. Can you talk a little bit about that aspect of your career and why that’s important to you?
I have always been really inspired by Robyn. I love Robin and she was one of the first people that I remember running their own label — she had Konichiwa Records. I think if I would’ve gone to a major label and I wouldn’t have had a smash hit immediately, I would have gotten shelved or dropped or been in some kind of weird contract. And I just, I knew that I wanted to wait as long as I could, if I ever signed so I would be in the position to sign a deal that was actually good for me and that doesn’t prevent me from dropping as much music as I’m dropping and gives me full creative control. That’s something that my career was made by, dropping songs and not having to worry about oh that’s the weekend Taylor Swift’s album comes out, so I can’t drop it. Or this big artist, or The Weeknd — whatever it was. I just didn’t have a big enough fan base that I would be a priority anywhere. I’ve been burned so many times with signing bad contracts in my life.
I’ve had bad managers since I was 14-years-old that signed my whole life off and left me not making money ever. So now, I’m really lucky because I have great management, and my friends who support me. And even though I can’t pay people big numbers to produce my songs or anything, that’s okay with the people I work with. I really feel like it’s not as important for me to get there, as much as how I get there. I want to get there on my own terms, with my own timing and I have my own definition of success. And I feel very successful. I’m really grateful for the support I’ve been getting from radio stations and people like Radio One and Apple Music and Spotify, so great, without them I would not have been able to do this so I guess it’s only been a few years that I have actually been able to do this. I’m just lucky that the time is right, and social media exists, and you can build your own fan base and do it any way you want it.
Jason Isbell is gearing up for the release of his upcoming album, Reunions. Ahead of the record’s release, Isbell virtually sat down with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show to perform a track from the album, discuss the record’s themes, and detail how the coronavirus has affected him.
Performing from a barn in his backyard, Isbell gave a soulful performance of his single “Only Children.” While Isbell reared his signature acoustic guitar, the singer was also accompanied by his wife and frequent collaborator, Amanda Shires, on the violin.
Chatting with Noah after his performance, Isbell further detailed the theme behind Reunions, saying he wrote it as a reflection on the years he was struggling with sobriety:
“I went through this period after I got sober, a little over eight years ago, where the person I used to be, I looked back on him with a lot of judgment and disdain. It took me a good six-and-a-half or seven years before I felt, ‘I could be friends with that guy again.’ Where I felt that was safe. Because I didn’t want to forgive myself too quickly for fear of turning back into the person I used to be. Finally, in the last couple of years, I felt comfortable looking back at the music I made then and the relationships I made then and the person I was then, and revisiting that. Going and sitting down and having a conversation with that person and not just hating his guts. Because it was safer to do that. So, when I started thinking of those things and those people, a lot of memories came back and sometimes in the form of ghosts. They came back to me in a way that I’m more equipped now to write about than I was ten years ago when I was falling down drunk and only had a couple of hours a day where I could be productive. Now, I can use the writing skills and the focus that I have to make music that that guy wanted to make ten years ago but wasn’t capable of.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Noah asked Isbell about his experience living in Tennessee and seeing restaurants begin to reopen amid the pandemic. Isbell responded by detailing his thought-out theory for why people around him were so willing to go back to their pre-pandemic lives. “I think a lot of people, in America and everywhere, a lot of people I grew up with and a lot of people that I still know, they see the same things pretty much every day,” he said. “They go to the same jobs, they see the same people.”
But, because Isbell himself chose to instead hit the road and gain new experiences, he’s used to seeing things he’s never seen before: “I think a lot of folks make the mistake of thinking they’ve seen this before because they don’t have a lot of experience with something they have never seen before. They’re not in the practice of experiencing new things. And that scares me.”
Watch Isbell perform “Only Children” and open up about Reunions on The Daily Show above.
Reunions is out 5/15 via Southeastern Records. Pre-order it here.
It’s been over a month now since the the faux-finale of The Walking Dead, and there’s still no date set for the actual finale. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, however, has suggested that that when it eventually airs, it will feel like a mini-movie, but that it may not arrive for several more months.
While that is upsetting in the short them, the long-term view may actually help the ability of The Walking Dead universe to line all of its ducks up in a row, specifically as it concerns the Rick Grimes’ movie. Before the pandemic hit, AMC had essentially lined up 40 consecutive weeks of The Walking Dead content, between the parent series, Fear the Walking Dead, and the two-season spin-off, The World Beyond. However, the architect of The Walking Dead universe, Scott Gimple, still had not yet totally cracked all the details on how and where the Rick Grimes’ movie would fit in, and last we heard, he was still trying to figure out one of two ways he was going with the script.
The pandemic, however, will give Gimple some necessary time to figure that out and slot it in between seasons at the appropriate time, says executive producer Greg Nicotero in an interview with SyFy:
“From what I understand from Mr. Gimple, the script is well underway,” Nicotero said. “I’ve looked at a couple of early drafts, but I haven’t seen anything lately, but from what I understand they’re digging away at it. One thing about this kind of situation is people that work at home… you know, writers… they’re able to take advantage of this time, and it’s a good time.”
“I have a feeling that when people push the play button again, there’s going to be a lot of material that’s going to be ready to go, because everyone’s getting scripts, and getting stuff just right to the point where they can get it ready before you start shooting. I think there’s going to be a lot of busy people, hopefully… hopefully in a few weeks?”
The interview, published yesterday, was recorded a few weeks ago, so by now, Scott Gimple must have all three Rick Grimes’ movies written, along with a map of the next decade of the universe. Right?
In the meantime, AMC announced that The Walking Dead spin-off, The World Beyond, would air in the fall (probably when the 11th season of The Walking Dead would normally air), as would at least some episodes of Fear the Walking Dead. During an earnings call, AMC also stated the the writers were continuing to work on the 11th season of The Walking Dead (and the final season of Better Call Saul), so when production resumes, both of shows should be poised to shoot their next seasons quickly.
Spike Lee is staying busy during quarantine. He’s gearing up for the release of his upcoming Netflix movie, Da 5 Bloods, which arrives on June 12 (and stars Chadwick Boseman, Jean Reno, Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, and Paul Walter Hauser). He also dropped a new short film, which he’s often prone to do, on Instagram, and this one’s geared toward a message of survival.
As Lee explained, this movie is titled New York New York because it’s “A Love Lettter To Its People.” The acclaimed filmmaker also appeared on a Thursday night CNN town hall, where he discussed his experience living in the Big Apple during this unprecedented time. “It’s painful when you see there is nobody there,” Lee explained to Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “But at the end of the film, that is when we see New Yorkers.”
Over the course of three whirlwind minutes, Lee’s eyes emotionally tours the deserted streets of Manhattan as people buckle down inside to ride out the virus. By the end of the short film, he moves to first responders and views of people on balconies, and the entire project feels like a shout of solidarity. New York City’s risen through the ashes before, and they’ll do so again. Watch Lee’s short film below.
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the fucking heart attacks i had over this.
