Forget Barbie vs. Oppenheimer. The biggest rivalry of the summer is Tom Cruise vs. Oppenheimer. The actor is reportedly none too pleased that Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One will have a limited run in some IMAX theaters before Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer comes along and hogs ALL the IMAX theaters.
Puck reports that Cruise “has been complaining loudly to Paramount executives and others about the IMAX situation… Mission 7 has booked most of the IMAX screens for the week of the film’s July 12 opening, but then on July 21 comes Universal’s Oppenheimer, which has locked in all the IMAX screens in North America and other territories for three full weeks.”
Oppenheimer was shot using IMAX cameras, and Nolan told the Associated Press that the “best possible experience” to see it in theaters is the IMAX 70mm film presentations (although there aren’t many of those across the country). Then again, Top Gun: Maverick “saved Hollywood’s ass,” as Steven Spielberg put it, so you can somewhat understand Cruise’s annoyance.
He’s been furiously showing the film to exhibitors in an effort to convince them to switch their plans from Oppenheimer or Barbie, which Warners scheduled opposite the Nolan film on July 21 as a middle-finger to Universal after it stole Nolan during the HBO Max day-and-date debacle. (Oppenheimer has not screened for exhibitors yet; I’m not sure about Barbie.) And Cruise is even personally calling around to exhibition and studio executives, per multiple sources.
Here’s an idea: give all the IMAX theaters to Barbie. Matter solved.
Dominic Fike’s “Mona Lisa” appears to be a part of the deluxe version of the soundtrack. The artwork for the song reads: “I made a song for a superhero movie… This is the cover for now.” It begins with his smooth vocals singing intimately against acoustic guitar before a beat imbues it with more energy and he eases into a chill flow: “I know you like your space and distance / Yeah, you don’t take admissions / They told you not to date musicians / Yeah, but can’t make you listen.”
Fans are eagerly awaiting his forthcoming album Sunburn, which will be arriving in July. The singles “Dancing In The Courthouse” and “Ant Pile” have listeners hooked so far. The singer also just announced the Don’t Stare At The Sun Tour, which will kick off right after the album is out. It’ll hit cities all over North America.
In the past few years, Janelle Monáe’s talent has become evident, if it wasn’t already, thanks to her triple threat status, impressive performance in Glass Onion, and the anticipation for her upcoming album The Age Of Pleasure sparked by the singles “Float” and “Lipstick Lover.” She didn’t always receive praise for being so good at so many things, though.
In a new list of outtakes from their recent Rolling Stone profile, Monáe recounted an incident in which they found themselves dodging bricks after a high school talent competition. They recalled their mom “driving me in her 1988 Dodge Plymouth, to and from talent shows, while people would throw bricks at our car because we won the talent show three, four times in a row.” They do, however, clarify that this only happened once.
The reactions to Monáe have certainly turned around recently. These days, folks tend to be more excited to see the singer/rapper/actor popping up to promote her music, especially as this album cycle, she’s taken to occasionally popping her top and flashing fans at her private listening parties. While she’ll probably have to tone it down when she goes on tour later this year, she explained this tendency in Rolling Stone, saying, “I’m much happier when my titties are out and I can run around free.”
Janelle Monáe is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Earlier this year, a video surfaced in which Kanye West told a person to stop filming him. They refused, so West took their phone and threw it. There was a police investigation over the incident, which ended with the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office saying that West wouldn’t face any charges. The story didn’t end there, though, as West is now being sued.
As Billboard reports, photographer Nichol Lechmanik has filed a lawsuit against West, accusing the rapper of assault, battery, negligence, and interference with the exercise of her civil rights. The complaint was filed in California Superior Court in Ventura County on May 31. In the suit, Lechmanik claims the incident caused her “great mental and emotional pain and suffering” and that she “anticipates incurring medical and related expenses.”
The suit says that Lechmanik was driving her car and filming Kim Kardashian as she exited Sports Academy in Newbury Park, California. At the time, she noticed West was “angrily confronting” a photographer on the street. The complaint noted, “Given Defendant Ye’s reputation for violence against photographers, his history of physically harming them, and based on his threatening body language, Plaintiff became fearful for the photographer’s safety.”
Then, West apparently approached Lechmanik’s car and “aggressively” said, “You all ain’t gonna run up on me like that.” When Lechmanik denied she was, West allegedly became “enraged,” “ripped her phone out of her hands,” and threw it “onto the street towards oncoming traffic.”
Lechmanik is requesting general and special damages, punitive and exemplary damages, civil penalties, and costs of the suit. She also wants an order enjoining West and “all persons acting in concert with him or acting on his behalf, from touching, striking, annoying, contacting, molesting, attacking, threatening, or otherwise interfering with […] the Plaintiff, and all persons similarly situated, to pursue the occupation of photographer.”
As Donald Trump stares down a damaging verdict from E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit that ultimately found the former president liable for sexual abuse, one of Trump’s far-right allies tried to get the whole case dismissed on some pretty wild grounds. Namely, that Trump is facing undue persecution as a white “Christian.”
The legal filing was made by James H. Brady, a known “gadfly who clogs courts with vexatious claims” who has reportedly been sanctioned by both state and federal courts for filing repetitive lawsuits. Unsurprisingly, his latest legal adventure didn’t work either.
“I am making this motion to intervene in the case of Carroll v. Trump, 20-cv-7311, because I am unwilling to sit silent and watch another white Christian be treated as poorly and unfairly as I personally have been treated in the New York State and Federal Courts,” Brady wrote to Judge Lewis Kaplan who wasted no time shooting down the motion.
According to Raw Story, Kaplan threw out the legal gambit less than 24 hours thanks to Brady essentially being some rando with no legal right to intervene. “Mr. Brady does not satisfy any of these criteria,” Kaplan wrote after explaining to Brady how being a lawyer works. “Accordingly, this motion is denied.”
Fortunately, Brady is in luck. He’ll have another chance to plead that Donald Trump is a victim of undue persecution for his “white Christian” beliefs after the former president defamed E. Jean Carroll again, prompting a second defamation lawsuit.
Gunna has done some light flexing on social media since his release from jail. The musician has even dropped his first track since the YSL RICO trial, titled “Brodies” with German rapper Ufo361. However, in his new solo single, the entertainer has finally responded to his peers that have taken jabs at him post his YSL Rico case.
On “Bread & Butter” (co-produced by Turbo, Omar Grand & Cam Griffin), Gunna leaves no snide comment unaddressed. In the song’s first verse, he touches on how his former rap crew YSL has turned their back on him. Gunna also seemingly takes aim at his former collaborator Lil Baby over his lack of support despite his mentor Pierre “P” Thomas having allegations of cooperating with law enforcement on his name as well.
“Peepin’ sh*t, I’m seein’ n****s fall back / You b*tch-ass n****s got me as the topic of the chat / You switched on me when you know you in business with a rat /And the boy that’s like your brother, and nobody speak on that,” raps Gunna.
Before the track closes out, in the second verse, Gunna speaks on his anger with how his plea arrangement was worked out as he raps: “F*ck I pay the lawyers all those mills for? / Just so I won’t have to say a word to dodge a railroad / N****s find it hard to understand, though / Dog can’t put me down, I been locked down, I don’t know which way to go / Never gave no statement or agreed to take no stand on ’em / On whatever you n****s on, then trust me, I’ma stand on it / Lawyers, and the DA did some sneaky sh*t, I fell for it.”
The official video directed by Leff is entirely in grayscale, metaphorically referring to the space Gunna is finding himself in. According to the rapper, things aren’t as clear-cut as it may seem.
Watch the full video above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Boston Calling isn’t the Coachella, Lollapalooza, or Bonnaroo of the Northeast, and that’s a good thing. Those festivals are special for their own reasons, but Boston Calling is a landmark event for something all its own: striking an unmatched balance of world-class acts and local talent. Roughly one-third of this year’s lineup hailed from New England, and the majority of those were formed or based in the Boston metropolitan area. There’s even a platform (the Orange stage) that exclusively featured regional groups. Of course, that’s relative to the 3-day fest’s modest size — 52 artists across four stages with a 40,000 capacity — but it still illustrates an admirable dedication to showcasing the best of the local scene on bigger stages and proliferating musical discovery, which should be a primary function of any music festival in the first place.
Throughout the 3-day event, held May 26-28 on the grounds of the Harvard Athletic Complex, there was the sense that attendees were just as committed to that cause, particularly evident in impressively sizable turnouts for each day’s opening acts. Friday’s opener, Cambridge-bred singer-songwriter Alisa Amador (winner of the 2022 NPR Tiny Desk Contest), enchanted a few hundred on the Red Stage with her blend of folk-pop and Spanish language soul, which came to a head during her sublime cover of Uruguayan musician Jorge Drexler’s version of Radiohead’s “High and Dry.”
David Brendan Hall
Saturday kicked off on the Blue Stage with Boston’s Q-Tip Bandits, who clearly had a contingent of diehard fans in attendance and visibly converted quite a few more during their high-energy set, packed with instantly memorable pop-rock hooks accented by New Orleans-style big band horns. Following the live debut of standout new tune “Tip Toe,” the band’s leader Leo Son reflected on posting up outside the fence behind the main stage during the first Boston Calling in 2013, held outside City Hall Plaza: “To get from there to here … this is a dream come true for us and that kid inside me, so thank you for being here.”
David Brendan Hall
Sunday saw Juice, who formed at Boston College, opening the Red Stage to a massive audience, which included one couple holding a sign saying that they drove 10 hours just to see the band for their honeymoon. The group’s dynamic combination of soulful rock, hip-hop, and shredding via electric violin set the bar high for a lively final day. That set preceded one of the strongest up-and-coming bands of the weekend, Los Angeles’s the Linda Lindas, who Boston Mayor Michelle Wu introduced for their first-ever performance in the historic city. “I’m so proud to be part of a city where art is the be all end all … [where we] support local artists and bring in rising talent,” she said, adding a sentiment of gratitude for the fest being able to “break down barriers” by including multi-ethnic bands on the lineup like these young Asian-American artists.
Wu’s statement underscored Boston Calling’s devotion to promoting diverse acts; the strongest standout among those was Genesis Owusu on the Blue Stage. The 25-year-old Australian embodied cross-cultural artistry, mixing hip-hop, jazz, and R&B, styles inspired by his birth country Ghana and avant-garde performance, which was enhanced by four backup dancers comparable win impact to the awe-inspiring vision of Solange’s 2016-era “A Seat At The Table” tour. “Are you aliiiiiive, Boston?!” he implored again and again. The way he easily spurred audience members into an exuberant, bouncing frenzy when he jumped into the crowd for “Black Dogs!” reflected the resounding answer: “Hell yes.”
The consistent mutuality of all-in love-for-live-music energy between artists and fans, particularly the locals, extended to sets from the big-ticket artists, too. The Lumineers’ Saturday night headlining set on the Green Stage was a shining example by virtue of it clearly drawing the weekend’s largest and most passionate crowd, who nearly drowned out the band with their loud singing during breakout hit “Hey Ho” and their career-starting anthem, “Flowers In Your Hair.” Queens of the Stone Age achieved it by inciting the first full-on mosh pit and crowd-surfing of the weekend (continued handily by King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard’s thunderous performance, also on Sunday) during a flurry of old favorites and the live premiere of intoxicatingly raucous new song “Negative Space.” Paramore, as always, was a shoo-in for unity and fan appreciation during their Sunday night closing show, inviting a super-fan named Sammy Jo — who, in an incredible coincidence, was also based in Nashville and got her hair done at frontwoman Haley Williams’ mainstay salon — to absolutely slay lead vocals on “Misery Business.” The National — who hold the longest tenure at the fest with four performances, in large part due guitarist Aaron Dessner’s role as the event’s co-curator — established solidarity on Friday when vocalist Matt Berninger careened through the crowd for super-charged standout “Abel.” Even the Dropkick Murphys — despite some initial blowback in response to their last-minute addition on Friday to replace the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ after their cancellation (due to Karen O’s unexpected illness) — succeeded in drawing in and winning over an enormous audience with their no-holds-barred brand of Irish punk rock.
But the fan-to-band affinity came most naturally in the form of deafening sing-alongs during the Foo Fighters Friday finale — their second show back after the tragic death of drummer Taylor Hawkins — where the group showcased a couple of new songs off upcoming album And Here We Are (due Friday, June 2), plus emotional tributes to Hawkins during frontman Dave Grohl’s solo rendition of “Cold Day In The Sun” (written by Hawkins) and a special appearance by the late drummer’s son, Shane Hawkins, on first-album rager “I’ll Stick Around.”
“I do have to say it takes a lot for every single one of these people here tonight on this side of the stage to be here,” said Grohl, referring to the band members’ literal family members looking on from the wings. “And we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you people. Just as we’re one big family on this side over here, I hope that you guys feel like we’re family, too.”
The legendary rocker’s proclamation drove it home: the festival exuded a sense of loyalty to its fans and artists, to preserving connections between them, particularly among the locals, year after year. In spite of an era where live music is taking a backseat to many other industries, especially in terms of government-backed financial support, Boston Calling represents a stronghold — its presence is just as and in some ways more vital than any other premier festival.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Madonna is one of the most important figures in pop music history, while The Weeknd is one of the biggest modern pop stars. Now, the pair and Playboi Carti have teamed up on “Popular,” a new single from the soundtrack of The Idol. If The Weeknd has his way, this will be the first of many collaborations between the two.
In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, The Weeknd spoke about how he’d like to make a full album with Madonna, saying:
“The thing is, I’ve always wanted to work with her. I’ve always wanted to write and produce a Madonna album… well, co-produce with her, of course […] because she’s a visionary and she has such a singular vision, and I just want to come into her world and create a classic Madonna album. That was always my dream. So this can be… hopefully this is the appetizer for that.”
He also said of “Popular,” “I’m proud of it. I’m definitely proud of it. Me and Carti had this… I mean, we’ve jammed out before. We’ve had a different version of this song prior. So I’ve had these vocals for a while and I’ve kind of just worked around it, and then kind of kept it in the tuck. But now it felt like it was time. It was time. And it felt right and it felt cohesive with this album that I’m working on right now. Or that I just actually finished. The Idol soundtrack, yeah. And so I’ve been producing the song for a while. And then Madonna, Madge. She’s the ultimate co-sign for this song, for this album, and for this TV show. And you’ll hear more of her in the show as well, too. She is the ultimate pop star.”
Madonna is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Rootin’ tootin’ Lauren Boebert must have been embarrassed after missing the debt ceiling vote after warring so hard against the legislation and vowing to vote against it. She scrambled up the Capitol Hill steps while the House passed the Fiscal Reponsibility Act of 2023 or H.R. 3746, and no explanation has surfaced this far for why she showed up too late for such a crucial issue. During what was surely an awkward aftermath for her, Boebert stayed uncharacteristically quiet much of the next day on Twitter.
What made Boebert miss the vote? Perhaps she was dealing with another “lipstick” kerfuffle or somewhere trying to cancel drag story time while her constituents defy her, but no matter the cause, Boebert decided to completely ignore the elephant in the GOP room. She changed the subject to something freedom-related, of course, and it appeared to be themed to troll Pride Month.
“I’m PROUD to be an American!” Boebert actually tweeted.
She knew what she was doing, of course, by changing the subject. She almost certainly realized that she made this statement on June 1. And she did this mere weeks after she made a Bud Light self-own over trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. So naturally, people had fun with this in response. First up, they trolled her back by “thanking” her for helping to kick off a happy LGBTQ+-themed month.
Thank you for showing support for Pride Month, Lauren!
Last month, Kid Cudi previewed a new song called “Flex” on TikTok and tweeted a pre-save link to it. Though many fans were excited, it seems more were disapproving. “You guys are my fans, ur my family!!!” Cudi wrote in a tweet hours after. “I hear yall!! Im pivoting. Different single June 2nd!! [smiley emoji, peace sign emoji, hearts emoji].”
The highly anticipated date of June 2 is now here, and the rapper delivered. “Porsche Topless” is out today. It’s a nearly three-minute celebratory anthem about being grateful: “While I’m geeked I can hardly speak / Thank them take photo as I lean / What could be next in my dream / Blessing from my God,” he raps.
This is only the beginning. In February, he prepared his fans for a big year. “Album this Fall. First singles this summer. The new chapter has begun… Ur not prepared man. We’ve reached a new level,” he tweeted. About what he was looking forward to, he wrote in another tweet, “Man, so much. My clothing line, directing my first movie that im starring in from a script I wrote, couple movies coming out, a lil tv, Im seriously the most hyped about it all.” He also added that a world tour is coming next year.
Listen to “Porsche Topless” above.
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