Category: Worldwide

Derek Jeter was a model of consistency and stoicism during his playing days, someone who almost perfectly managed the intense media scrutiny that comes with playing in New York, robbing distractions of air before they could takeover the narrative and interrupt his and his team’s focus.

In retirement, Jeter has continued to draw eyes and clicks, because he’s Derek Jeter, a Hall of Fame inductee, husband, father, founder of Player’s Tribune, and former part owner and front person for the Miami Marlins. It’s a life, in totality, that fascinates, partly because Jeter has been so good at limiting his exposure to prying eyes. We want what we can’t have, which in this case means access.

But in an era where everything and everyone seemingly gets a 30 For 30 or a larger docuseries, it should have seemed inevitable that something like ESPN’s The Captain was coming. The question is, with Player’s Tribune producing the seven-part docuseries that debuted after last night’s Home Run Derby (and which you can stream on ESPN+), is this just more brand management?

Enter Randy Wilkins, the director of the project and a lifelong Yankees fan. Wilkins is on the hook to make sure that the series doesn’t feel like, in his words, “a Yankeeography.” And after watching the first five, I can state that it doesn’t, with executive producer Spike Lee’s handpicked director for the project probing Jeter’s life while also running back some of his many classic moments of grit, determination, and backpage attention-getting.

Jeter’s isolating ways, the allure of NYC nightlife, his fierce belief in loyalty, and the erosion of his friendship with Alex Rodriguez all get ample time in the spotlight. But it’s the fifth episode — which deals with race, community action, and complex calculations on whether speaking out in a world where Colin Kaepernick lost everything for doing exactly that — which presents a powerful and thought-provoking bit of commentary on the cross-section of sports and culture.

We caught up with Wilkins about avoiding his fan biases, Jeter’s level of control in terms of the content of the docuseries, whether baseball players should speak out more, and Jeter’s journey.

You grew up a Derek Jeter fan. Were there any moments where you found it hard to delve into certain areas or where you felt like you had to forcibly separate the fan from you as a filmmaker?

Oh, no. I willingly separated that before we even got into it. My primary responsibility is to tell a story that’s accessible to as many people as possible. So my fandom can’t really factor into it. I can’t really have a bias going into telling this story. So I think being a fan helped me because I knew a lot about Derek and Derek’s career. And I think that informed the story structure and what was important in terms of the baseball side of things.

But in terms of telling the story, my primary responsibility is to engage as many people as possible and not just, like, satisfy Yankees fans or present a biased story where it’s clear that this is just a fanboy journey for seven hours. So I was very conscious of making sure that bias and that fandom was put to the side and that we presented Derek in a way that made him accessible to everybody.

Players Tribune is a producer on this. So obviously Derek was involved in this process not just as a subject. What was the level of that involvement? The level of his guidance or lack of guidance with regard to what was being said and what was not being said? Did he have any kind of editorial control over it?

He did, but I mean, it was a collaboration, there was never a mandate. There was never something that was dictated to me to include or remove. We worked side by side. I know a lot of people will think, “he’s a prominent athlete, he has all control over it,” but that wasn’t the case. We worked side by side and if there were conversations that needed to be had, we had those conversations and arrived at a consensus that we were both happy with. So I wasn’t in a position where I had to make creative decisions because I was told to make that creative decision.

I think Derek, to his credit, was very open to being criticized in the project and to be deconstructed in a way that I don’t think really has happened to him publicly before.

Any specific takeaways from this experience where you were like, “Wow, I didn’t realize that that had happened?”

I think how important trust and loyalty are to Derek, and how that really is his moral compass when he deals with people off the field, but even in how he interacts with his teammates. And I think it has a lot to do with his leadership style. I think it has a lot to do with who he embraced in the clubhouse and who he might not have totally embraced in the clubhouse. I think that trust and loyalty are two very real tenets of how he views the world. And I knew about it, and you hear stories that Derek will cut you off, and you hear some kind of hint towards that, but the depth in which he reveals that in multiple ways, both on the field and off the field, was something that I wasn’t really prepared for. It feels like it really drives a lot of how Derek interacts with the world.

Yeah, that was really interesting. What was the quote? “Loyalty one way is stupidity?”

Yeah, when he said that, I was like, “Whoa.”

Him specifically talking about how he sort of looks at every interaction as, “What do you want from me?” I think that was really telling and really interesting. I’m curious what you thought about that.

It goes back to that surprise of how much trust and loyalty really matter to him. And I think that it’s revealing in the sense that, you’re guarded with the media for obvious reasons, but even on a personal level, you’re incredibly guarded, and it feels like you’re forced to be that way. And it’s hard for me to really understand what it’s like to live day to day like that. And I think Derek admits that it’s, in some ways, a character flaw. I think it’s something that he recognizes that might not be the best thing for him.

So I appreciated that candor. But I try to put myself in his shoes as well and being around him now that we’re doing press and we’ve had some things and I’ve been in the public with him, I kind of get it. People always want something from him, whether it’s something small or something big. So I understand being on guard the entire time because you don’t know who you’re coming across.

You wonder if him waiting to have a family until after his career is part of it, too, if he just completely shut off himself from that level of vulnerability that’s obviously required to be in a relationship with somebody, before that point [when he stops playing]. Speculation, of course.

Actually, it’s perceptive and true. I mean, we talk about it in the sixth episode. He always wanted a family, but I think part of it too is that he could be vulnerable with people that he loved and had immediate access to them. You know what I mean? So he could relax and drop his shoulders a little bit and be around people that he trusts and that he cares for, and is protected from all of those responsibilities and the things that come along with celebrity.

So he wanted to wait to have a family because for him, baseball was number one. His career was number one, and he wasn’t going to negotiate that. So I think having a family afterwards allowed him to put all of his energy and focus on raising a family, being a husband, being a dad. And I think part of that too is, it protects him from some of the public demands that he had for so long.

What’s the decision like when you have that “colorless” quote from Wallace Matthews [wherein the longtime sportswriter also said Jeter did not identify racially]? Like, do you instantly know, okay, we’re going back to Derek with this? Like, how does that kind of break down?

We were going to ask him, so we wanted to prepare Derek for it so he wasn’t caught off guard. You know, it was just like a matter of respect so that it didn’t blindside him. Because he obviously didn’t know that this was said prior to like another interview. So we sent it to him. We let him know that we were going to use it, that this was going to be a part of it because it’s such an inflammatory statement that we wanted to put it in there, but we wanted to give him an opportunity to speak his truth, and his family as well.

Did you show Wallace Matthews Derek’s response as well?

Oh no, there wasn’t a response. We gave him a chance to kind of like pull it back and he just kept going.

The NBA made a statement about Dobbs with the WNBA, LeBron and Kyrie spoke out, Joe Burrow from the Bengals. Baseball’s been mostly silent. I know, in the doc, Derek mentioned the toll that athletes can endure if they speak out [on social issues] — Colin Kaepernick being a perfect example of someone who was vocal on a social cause and then got run out of the league, as Derek mentioned. What’s your stance, personally, on if baseball players should be saying more on these social issues?

I think baseball players absolutely should be speaking out more about this. I think that baseball romanticizes tradition and history, but I think that there is an over-reliance on that history and it ignores the present, and I think it ignores the responsibility of the platform that they have. And I think in many cases, Major League Baseball and some of the players hide behind that tradition, and I think they hide behind some of the practices that have been passed down from generations of players to generations of players. And I think that they use that as an easy out, not to say something that requires some courage.

And I think that there need to be more players that speak out and break from those norms that exist within Major League Baseball, and I think it’s absolutely necessary to take place. I think that there needs to be a change in Major League Baseball on a lot of levels, both on the field and off the field, and I think culturally, there needs to be a lot of work done. So I think part of that is breaking that cycle of hiding behind tradition, and just jumping in and talking about things that need to be talked about.

‘The Captain’ is a seven-part series that will stream on ESPN+

J.K. Simmons is certainly not afraid to tackle a variety of roles on screen, and his latest may go down as the weirdest one to date. According to reports, the next time you see Simmons he will be torturing someone in a Lovecraftian horror movie with a public bathroom glory hole involved.

The film, Glorious, comes from director Rebekah McKendry and is slated to premiere at Fantasia later this year. And as Variety details, the plot of Glorious revolves around that thing we’ve all done a time or two before: waiting out a hangover locked in a public restroom?

The film follows Wes (Kwanten) as he waits out a hangover locked in a public restroom with a mysterious entity (Simmons) behind a glory hole. Co-written by Joshua Hull, David Ian McKendry and Todd Rigney, the story takes Wes deep into his own psyche as he wrestles with fate and a glimpse of the unthinkable in this Lovecraft-inspired comic horror.

OK, so perhaps not as relatable as you may think. But it certainly does sound… weird. Which is what everyone involved is going for here. In the Variety interview with McKendry, the director alluded to “an eight-foot-tall teddy bear with a giant vagina in its chest” appearing in the film. But at least, apparently, Simmons’ performance will start out as normal before things totally go off the rails.

Even in the early stages, the biggest thing for me was that the guy in the bathroom could not sound scary from the start. It needs to sound like a guy in a bathroom stall next to you. It needs to sound cordial and friendly and he can’t sound scary. There has to be a reason that Wes wants to keep talking to him. And so J. K.’s voice is perfect because he’s just so multifaceted.

And as we’ve seen in Whiplash, Simmons certainly knows how to warp the emotions of someone on screen with his words and tone. So it all sounds promising, to say the least. Let’s just hope nothing terrifying comes out of the toilets and ruins our water closet routines once and for all. Oh… oh no. That’s definitely going to happen, isn’t it?

[via Variety]

Are you paying attention? Because if you haven’t been hipped to the sounds of Domi & JD Beck yet, it’s time to get on board. Anderson .Paak is here to tell you the same and in fact, he sat-in with the jazz beat prodigies on stage last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live! as the three of them performed their song, “Take A Chance.”

The track was introduced by Garth Alger himself (guest host Dana Carvey) and .Paak, wearing a fuzzy bucket hat and over-sized two-toned shades, was perched in front of Domi on keys and Beck on drums. The talented instrumentalists elevated .Paak’s vocal stylings on the new tune, which is on their upcoming debut album, Not Tight, out July 29th on .Paak’s own Apeshit Records label and Blue Note.

Domi & JD Beck have made a name for themselves as not only prodigious jazz musicians who have sat in with Herbie Hancock and Thundercat, but also masterful hip-hop beat conductors. They flashed their vocal chops on the “Take A Chance” performance, singing back-up for Paak on the song’s hook while not skipping a beat on their respective instruments. As the song comes to a close, .Paak looks out at the crowd and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, Domi & JD Beck!” The two then proceed to play as dexterously as humanly possible into the song’s outro and the only response we’re left with amazement at their skills. The future is here.

Watch Domi & JD Beck play “Take A Chance” with .Paak above.

Anderson .Paak is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Jessie Ware is back, and ready to take us on a brand new journey. On her latest single, “Free Yourself,” Ware finds liberation on the dancefloor as she gets lost in the music.

The funky house-disco-inspired self-empowering anthem is produced by Clarence Coffee Jr., along with Stuart Price, both of whom give the song an infectious touch with groovy pianos and thumping kickdrum.

“Free yourself / Keep on moving up that mountain top / Why don’t you please yourself? / If it feels so good then don’t you, baby don’t you stop?,” Ware sings, offering us a taste of her upcoming fifth album.

“‘Free Yourself’ is the beginning of a new era for me,” said Ware in a statement. “I’m so excited for people to have this song for the end of their summer; to dance, to feel no inhibitions and to feel joyful, because that’s how I’ve been feeling recently being able to tour again and being able to sing again.”

In a recent interview with BBC Radio 1, Ware revealed just how she’s feeling upon the kickoff of her new era.

“I feel empowered. I feel confident. I feel really raring to go,” she said.

In addition to new music, Ware will support Harry Styles during his Love On Tour for five dates at Chicago’s United Center this October.

Check out “Free Yourself” above.

LIV Golf has shaken the golf world to its core, as the Saudi-backed league has thrown massive amounts of guaranteed money at some of the top golfers in the world to poach them away from the PGA Tour. The Greg Norman-helmed league poses an existential threat to the PGA Tour’s supremacy as the home of the world’s top players and has led the Tour to already try to make some major changes to coax their top players to stick around with the promise of bigger prize purses and some exclusive events for the top guys.

To this point, LIV Golf has almost exclusively been a story in golf circles, with no real impact elsewhere on the world of sports. That could change very soon as Charles Barkley is being courted by the tour to join their broadcast team (which is currently just on YouTube with no TV network partnership). Barkley has made clear his willingness to listen to the overtures of LIV Golf, as his love of golf is well known and he’s not one to turn down a check either, even in the face of the backlash others have dealt with for signing on for the overt sportswashing efforts of the Saudi government.

At first, it was assumed Barkley would look to join LIV, which only has eight events currently (moving to 10 next year), on top of his TNT duties as the face of Inside the NBA, but according to Dan Patrick, Barkley told him that if he were to take the LIV deal, he knows he’d have to step away from TNT’s NBA coverage.

Barkley, who turns 60 next February, has long said he’d step away from Inside the NBA after he turns 60, but this is not the way anyone would’ve anticipated that happening. One of the most beloved figures in sports going to LIV and walking away from the NBA desk would send massive waves through the sports media landscape. The question is whether Barkley, who has a Q-rating about as high as anyone, could withstand the backlash that would come and be an actual draw for LIV, particularly when you consider NBA fans would not be happy that he left the basketball desk.

Hopefully this is all just Barkley ensuring that Turner comes correct with an improved offer to keep him long-term, because Inside the NBA wouldn’t be the same without him, but we’ll find out how real his interest is soon enough.

Monday night’s Home Run Derby featured one of the great individual performances in Derby history from Julio Rodriguez, as he blasted 81 home runs across three rounds in a runner-up performance to Juan Soto — who mashed the longest home run of the night.

However, as impressive as the efforts of Rodriguez and Soto were, it was impossible to truly admire their work in the moment because of the Derby’s rapid-fire nature with the timed format. For years, the complaint of fans was that the Derby was too slow. The 10-out format dragged on because players took pitch after pitch, waiting for the perfect toss so they wouldn’t waste outs reaching for a bad one.

Moving on from the outs format was the right move of Major League Baseball, but they now have the opposite problem with the timed format. The event still takes three hours (but doesn’t run the risk of going any longer unless you get far too many ties that need to be broken), but you can no longer ooh and ahh at every mammoth shot as they happen, because another pitch is on its way before the last one lands in the bleachers.

The magic of the Derby isn’t simply the volume of home runs being hit, but how far baseball’s best power hitters can send it, reaching areas of ballparks once thought to be impossible to reach. Monday night there were some of these moments, like Ronald Acuña bouncing one off the canopy over the left field concourse and out of the stadium completely, but there wasn’t time to appreciate it because before that ball finished bounding out of the stadium, Acuña hit two more baseballs.

That’s the only way to succeed in the current format, and with $1 million on the line, the players have plenty of incentive to do everything they can to win. The problem is, that takes away from everyone’s ability to marvel at a moon shot. Acuña’s rocket to left should’ve caused pandemonium in Dodger Stadium, with his fellow players losing their minds, Ronald having the time to stand there and admire his work, and fans offering a rousing ovation. Instead, it created a quick murmur from the crowd and Acuña didn’t even know what he’d done, as he was focused on his next swings as soon as that one left the bat.

The answer to the Derby’s issue isn’t to go back to outs — which I briefly posited on Twitter last night only to get rightfully yelled at and reminded of how slow and boring that would get — but instead to go to a pitch count. Instead of each player having the chance to hit as many baseballs as possible in a certain time frame, they should get a set number. Once their pitcher has gone through the basket, that’s it.

This would solve the two biggest issues with the two formats we’ve seen in the Derby. You could be more methodical, watching each home run until it lands and letting everyone (in person and watching on TV) admire each shot without worrying about rounds dragging on forever, and you also ensure that players can’t take and take and take, because each pitch you pass on is a ball you don’t get back. If there’s concern about players being too patient and taking too long between pitches, you can set a longer clock — say 7 minutes (that’d be a 56 minute first round, which is about what it is now anyways) to get through the 40 or 50 baseballs, whatever number they land on. The biggest potential issue is the guy throwing you BP might be a disaster under the pressure of a pitch count, but let’s be honest, if you are picking someone to throw you BP and they stink, that’s on you and has always been the case during the Derby, anyway.

The frenetic pace of the current Derby is simply too hard for anyone to follow and appreciate fully what these guys are doing. Karl Ravech had a nightmarish time trying to track baseballs in L.A. on Monday night, often miscalling home runs and non-home runs because he’s trying to track one ball and immediately snap his head around to find the next before the other lands. The camera work in the current format is also impossible to do well, as they keep a constant split screen of the guy hitting on the side while trying to track each ball and snapping back and forth with every swing.

Being able to follow each home run until it lands and get full reactions from the booth, players on the field, and the guy hitting would all be a gigantic improvement on what is, to be clear, a still entertaining product. Right now, its biggest problem is that it is not as enjoyable as I think it can be.

While Miriam Margolyes is perhaps best known for her role as Professor Pomona Sprout in the Harry Potter movies, the 81-year-old British actress has appeared in a number of films including the 1999 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, End of Days. While the Terminator star has evolved into a more elder statesman/adorable animal whisperer in recent years, he apparently was not the best to work with during the late ’90s.

During a recent appearance on the “I’ve Got News For You” podcast, Margolyes named Schwarzenegger as one of her least favorite co-stars thanks to the actor allegedly farting in her face. Via New York Post:

“[I] didn’t care for him; he’s a bit too full of himself,” Margolyes said about the former California governor. “He farted in my face. Now, I fart, of course I do – but I don’t fart in people’s faces. He did it deliberately, right in my face.”

She then went on to describe the biblical action flick: “I was playing Satan’s sister, and he was killing me, so he had me in a position where I couldn’t escape and lying on the floor. And he just farted.”

We love us some Arnold, but c’mon, dude. You can’t be farting in people’s faces when they’re trying to play dead. Not cool. As for what it must be like to have one of the greatest action stars of all time beef one in your mouth, this YouTube compilation is probably the next best thing. You just don’t see stunning realism like this anymore.

(Via New York Post)

Elon Musk woke up earlier this year and decided it would be cool to rule Twitter (in addition to his various other companies, including but not limited to Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company). He then determined to purchase the social media juggernaut (for $44 billion) and then took it back, or at least, he tried to do so. Since then, he’s been locked in a poop-emoji-flinging battle with remaining executives (including CEO Parag Agrawal) of Twitter, who are understandably steamed about being thrown into financial chaos.

At present, the ensuing public war has gone legal, all after both Tesla and Twitter stock tanked, and Elon’s latest tactic has been to try and delay the trial for as long as possible. Twitter, meanwhile, wants earlier proceedings to force the sale deal or secure some damages. Elon wanted to postpone the mess until next year, but as Deadline reports, the seed-spreader of the year was not successful. From Deadline, expect a fall trial:

Delaware Chancery Court Chief Judge Kathaleen McCormick has set a five-day trial in October for Twitter’s lawsuit against Elon Musk. Twitter had asked for an expedited four-day trial in September, while Musk’s attorneys wanted a February date.

The ruling in today’s hearing favored Twitter as the judge agreed with its arguments that a delay causes the business irreparable harm, and disagreed with the Musk camp, represented by Andrew Rossman, that a fall trial was an unfeasible time frame for all parties involved. “In my view, the defendants underestimate the ability of the court,” she said.

Dude should have stuck to simply enjoying Twitter, right? Now, stakeholders everywhere are feeling nervous as heck and wanting to jump ship. As a result, a whole lot of employee futures hang in the balance at both Twitter and Tesla (although Musk already expresses skepticism over whether some Tesla employees “work” anyway). Meanwhile, Elon keeps on fathering those love children (as does his dad, Errol) while wondering why people don’t want to have 80 children apiece. Yup, some billionaires simply don’t get it.

Love may officially be dead now that Desus and Mero are breaking up, but Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are doing their best to keep the dream alive now that they’re married.

The new Mrs. Affleck nee Lopez confirmed their Las Vegas wedding this week, which surprised Bennifer fans with its abrupt nature and low-key execution. And now that we’re learning a bit more about how it went down, well, it was all very cute.

On Tuesday, Good Morning America interviewed Kenosha Portis, a witness working at The Little White Chapel in Vegas, which stayed open late to accommodate the Hollywood power couple. Not that anyone there really seemed to mind: they were blown away that the soon-to-be newlyweds were even there.

“I started shaking a little bit, like, ‘This is Jennifer Lopez we are getting ready to marry!’” Portis said.

According to People, there was also a lot of crying from both Affleck and Lopez during the ceremony.

At the altar, they exchanged self-penned vows and simple wedding bands.

“It was beautiful. Some tears were shed by them both,” Booth tells PEOPLE of Lopez and Affleck. “Jennifer looked stunning.” Indeed, as PEOPLE previously reported, Lopez wore a white off-the-shoulder Zuhair Murad gown. (That night, she also wore “a dress from an old movie,” as she called it in her newsletter; PEOPLE later confirmed it was a frock by Alexander McQueen.)

It all does sound very nice and un-Hollywood, honestly. Which is probably why people are so interested in how the wedding actually happened in the first place. Congrats to both Afflecks on finding a moment of joy despite, well, everything. Maybe there’s hope for us all yet.

[via People]

Rain poured down with such force that it obscured the grounds beyond the festival gates and delayed entry. It was the kind of summer rain Midwesterners know all too well; heavy and humid but falling in short spurts. The dirt at Chicago’s Union Park began turning to mud and a passerby had one word to sum up the first few hours of Pitchfork Music Festival 2022: Soggy. But even the perpetual rain during the three-day festival didn’t deter excitable indie fans. Clad in brightly colored ponchos, attendees made the most of the weather; rain jackets became lawn blankets and umbrellas became props to dance with when they weren’t providing shelter. Enduring the rain was worth catching sets by today’s top indie artists like Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, Lucy Dacus, Camp Cope, and Toro Y Moi.

The rain didn’t come as a surprise to seasoned Pitchfork-goers, seeing as the festival is routinely booked during the rainiest week in Chicago’s summer. But the weather served as a reminder of the gritty ethos of the festival and reflected the tenacity and determination of music fans. People don’t come to Pitchfork for Instagram-able moments or to sport glittery festival outfits. They come to lose themselves in muddy mosh pits set to the tune of left-of-the-dial artists they won’t hear on mainstream radio. All weekend, crowds were dense with music lovers collectively swooning to Indigo De Souza and Cate Le Bon, thrashing to The Armed and Dry Cleaning, bouncing to Tierra Whack and Noname, and getting a move on to Amber Mark and The Roots.

For fans and artists alike, attending Pitchfork is an indie badge of honor. The event is a benchmark of indie stardom and puts the trajectory of artists’ rise to fame on full display. Those who frequent the festival have had the pleasure of seeing certain bands blow up before their eyes. Lucy Dacus, who held an evening performance slot on day two, reminisced on her Pitchfork set from a few years ago; she had played to a much smaller crowd while being lightly shocked by the microphone in the (once-again) pouring rain. But now, she was serenading a crowd of thousands of adoring fans screaming her name in between each jaunty song.

Japanese Breakfast have also earned impressive accolades since their last Pitchfork performance. After playing a midday set on the festival’s smaller stage a few years ago, the group received two Grammy nominations and performed on top-rated late-night talk shows. Singer Michelle Zauner is now a New York Times best-selling author whose book, Crying In H-Mart, is being translated into several languages. This year, their indie esteem was tangible as they took over Pitchfork’s main stage backed by a full brass section and flashy stage props complete with a massive, flower-adorned gong. During their set, Zauner invited Jeff Tweedy to join her on stage, lead singer of Wilco and quasi Chicago indie royalty. Together, they sang a rendition of one of Japanese Breakfast’s “Kokomo, IN” before harmonizing a cover of Wilco’s “Jesus Don’t Cry.”

Beyond Wilco’s cameo and Japanese Breakfast’s engaging set, day two as a whole was something special. Deemed “sad girl Saturday” by festivalgoers thanks to the back-to-back-to-back performances by Dacus, Japanese Breakfast, and Mitski, the day decidedly drew the largest crowds of the weekend. Several people gushed about the “sapphic energy” the lineup exuded and Dacus even took a poll about the orientation of the crowd in attendance. “I’ve been taking a census at shows lately — who here is gay?” she asked, and the vast majority of the hands in the crowd shot up alongside a roaring cheer. The elated screaming was just as audible for Mitski, who transformed the headlining stage into a theater, remaining in character as she fluidly moved through the intentional choreography of each emotive track.

While most of the music fans powered through the stormy weather, the rain did seem to put a damper on the general mood. Slick stages prohibited artists from dancing around and health scares were unfortunately common. Both Japanese Breakfast and Noname had to stop their sets several times call for medical attention in the crowd, taking to the mic to remind the importance of drinking water and looking out for those around them.

After tender and emotional sets the day prior, it was clear energy levels were depleted by day three. Earl Sweatshirt’s DJ attempted to lift the crowd’s spirits in vain, announcing there were “too many people for it to be this quiet.” But the pervasive gloom was picked up by the groovy lineup. A high-spirited performance by Toro Y Moi drew the most energetic crowd by far as the musician bopped through a mix of funk-fused Mahal tracks and early career favorites. “I hope you all like 160 bpms,” he told the crowd before they erupted in movement. The Roots, fronted by rapper Black Thought and backed by drummer Questlove, ended the festival on a high note. Jazzy solos by a wildly talented keytar player and flutist sent infectious positive vibes loose throughout the park, which were only lifted by a guest appearance by comedian Hannibal Burress.

Through gray skies and pouring rain, Pitchfork 2022 is a reminder of why we tolerate discomfort to experience the pure bliss of watching our favorite bands alongside a community of music lovers. Enduring torrential downpours and slippery mud is worth it for the music — worth it to grin and groove alongside strangers and new friends — as long as the expensive shoes are left at home.