Category: Worldwide

In 2020, it looked like Janelle Monáe had come out as non-binary after tweeting “#IAmNonBinary.” They later clarified in an interview, though, “I tweeted the #IAmNonbinary hashtag in support of Nonbinary Day and to bring more awareness to the community. I retweeted the Steven Universe meme, ‘Are you a boy or a girl? I’m an experience,’ because it resonated with me, especially as someone who has pushed boundaries of gender since the beginning of my career. I feel my feminine energy, my masculine energy, and energy I can’t even explain.”

However, now, Monáe has gone ahead and declared as directly as possible that they are in fact non-binary: In a new Red Table Talk interview (as Billboard notes), Monáe told Jada Pinkett Smith, “I’m non-binary, so I just don’t see myself as a woman, solely. I feel like God is so much bigger than the ‘he’ or the ‘she,’ and if I am from God, I am everything.”

Monáe continued, “I will always, always stand with women. I will always stand with Black women, but I just see everything that I am, beyond the binary.”

Monáe also discussed why they decided to come out now, saying, “Somebody said, ‘If you don’t work out the things that you need to work out first before sharing it with the world, then you’re going to be working it out with the world.’ That’s what I didn’t want to do.”

Watch the full Red Table Talk episode here.

In recent years, it has seemed that musical content in hip-hop and R&B has been firmly divided by genre – and gender. Hip-hop gets to be the sole domain of men with toxic narratives driven by rappers like Drake and Future. They play aloof and apathetic toward the women in their lives, gaslighting them for being hoes while loudly proclaiming they’ll never settle down themselves. Meanwhile, it’s the women in R&B, like Grammy winner Jazmine Sullivan and Summer Walker, who have to play the fed-up victims of men’s mind games. Seemingly every song sounds wounded — or barring that, encouraging women to recover from the wounds inflicted on them by destructive relationships.

Kali, the 21-year-old Atlanta rapper who won viral fame thanks to beloved clips of her songs on TikTok, is dead set on upending this particular convention in Black music. In March, she unleashed her major-label debut EP, Toxic Chocolate, pointedly reversing the dynamic and staking a claim on space for women in the toxicity conversation in hip-hop. “If somebody think they going to play games with me,” she explains of the EP’s contrarian philosophy, “I’m going to show you, look, I’m competitive, and you’re going to lose this game, sir, ma’am, anybody. It’s just, like, put your foot down. The girls need to get their power back.”

That’s what she does on the EP with songs like “UonU,” a role reversal anthem that would make Michael Scott proud – oh, how the turntables… etc. There’s also “Standards,” which finds the young rapper drawing her line in the sand and demanding consistency from the men she deals with. And on the EP’s title track, she offers the following flippant missive: “I’m really in love, I ain’t really toxic / Just playin’, I’m lying / Fuck on the side, oh he throwing up crying.” Kali’s debut is what would happen if Megan Thee Stallion got stuck in the Brundle teleporter with Future while Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Women” played in the background.

Of course, she doesn’t see it that way. For her, it’s just about flipping those sad songs into veritable bangers, slathered with a greasy layer of Southern crunk. “I always hear girls, even myself… We’d be like, ‘Oh, I would never, I wouldn’t do him like that.’ But, we got enough music telling us that, enough sad music to cry about. It’s time to just be like, ‘You know what? He did it to you, why you can’t do it to him?’ Summer Walker’s stuff had just came out. Everybody sliding down walls, and crying. It was just like, ‘No, that’s not the vibes anymore.’ Do that man how he did you. Let’s see who can really take it.”

If this seems like a prescient outlook for someone who just reached drinking age, well, it is. But Kali has always been precocious, starting her rap career at the age of just 12 years old after writing down her pre-teen feelings in a journal and earning the right to her own bedroom by meeting her father’s challenge of writing a full album’s worth of rap songs to the beats he made at home. Through high school, she pursued soccer to avoid her parents’ scrutiny over her subject matter, but upon graduation returned to her first love: rapping. After a brush with early stardom thanks to an audition on Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow, Kali overcame a few more early career setbacks to achieve viral fame when she uploaded her song “Do A Bitch” to TikTok in late 2020.

That song, which she later remixed with Rico Nasty, laid the groundwork for her next viral single, “MMM MMM,” to truly take off. “My first reaction [to the song going viral] was, ‘I did it again,’” she recalls. “‘I’m doing it again, y’all.’ I can say, ‘I got the plan, I just need the platform.’” The platform came just a few weeks later when fellow Atlanta rapper Latto reached out to her to jump on the remix. There likely couldn’t be a better candidate; aside from sharing a hometown, the two rappers both started their rap careers young, both garnered a bit of initial attention thanks to a reality TV rap competition, and both were given the co-sign of an older, more established artist – the very epitome of paying it forward.

Latto continued to pay it forward, recruiting Kali to her first-ever headlining tour. At the stop in Los Angeles, I got to see the impact of Kali’s music firsthand as the sold-out crowd at the Novo recited back her lyrics bar-for-impressively-witty-bar. “A lot of people have been telling me, ‘Kali, your tape is no-skips, straight through,’” she humblebrags. “‘I’ve listened to this every day straight through.’ Even being on tour, people knowing the words already – and it hasn’t even been that long, and I’ve only had like five shows – is super crazy to me, it makes me so happy. Every show, I see that one person that knows every song, word for word, and even a crowd singing along by the second hook, I’m like, ‘Oh, well y’all really is tuned in.’”

Kali admits that there’s been an adjustment to the newfound fame, but she’s already ready for more. “I want to do my own tour,” she muses. “I would love to do that. That’s why I’m putting in so much work on this one… I leave the show with a goal every day: Hopefully, someone left the show like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know Kali, but I’m going to look up more of her music.’ I just want to be super big. So whatever I got to do to be big, that’s what I’m going to do.” When I ask whether or not she accepts the claims that she’s rap’s women’s answer to Future, she demures.

“No, no, this is a toxic phase,” she laughs. “I’m just letting you all know, I don’t play games. This is not that. So, if you ever trying to shoot your shot, just make sure you listen to the tape first. Before you show me your A-S-S, I got you. But as soon as you do that, Toxic Chocolate will appear. And I would throw a toxic tantrum.”

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

Alec Baldwin has remained relatively quiet since the tragic shooting on the set of Rust last fall, which took the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Early on in the investigation, Baldwin was notoriously uncooperative with authorities, insisting he wasn’t guilty, but not giving up his phone for evidence.

Now, the New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau have found that Baldwin was innocent in the matter, saying that he was not responsible for the errors that caused the shooting. The actor posted a poorly cropped notes app statement on his Instagram from his attorney:

We are grateful to the New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau for investigating this matter. We appreciate that the report exonerates Mr. Baldwin by making clear that he believed the gun held only dummy rounds. Additionally, the report recognizes that Mr. Baldwin’s authority on the production was limited to approving script changes and creative casting. Mr. Baldwin had no authority over the matters that were the subject of the Bureau’s findings of violations, and we are pleased that the New Mexico officials have clarified these critical issues. We are confident that the individuals identified in the report will be held accountable for this tragedy.

Despite being cleared by the New Mexico OHSB, Baldwin still faces a wrongful death lawsuit from Hutchins’ husband. The set’s armorer has also sued the ammo supplier that provided the live rounds.

Hutchins was fatally shot on the set of Rust in October. Baldwin was allegedly holding the gun at the time, though he insisted he did not pull the trigger. Baldwin was seen heading back to work in February for the first time since the incident. Meanwhile, the lawyer representing Hutchins’ estate believes Baldwin’s refusal to take accountability is “shameful.“

Nicole Scherzinger has confused her old white men and in doing so, prolonged our chronic nightmare. The singing competition series The Masked Singer on FOX will let anyone be on the show, from judge and noted anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy, to former mayor of New York City and noted enemy of democracy Rudy Giuliani.

During Wednesday night’s episode of the seventh season of The Masked Singer, Rudy Giuliani, who performed as Jack in the Box, was unmasked. Fortunately, Giuliani’s reveal was not welcome. For his final song, Guliani, who helped proliferate former President Donald Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was “stolen,” sang “Bad to the Bone” horribly. At first, the judges who could not figure out who the singer was based on their clues were hyped, as they always are when a competitor is about to be unmasked. But things came crumbling down into chaos once everyone — including a horrified audience who did not sign up for this kind of chaos — realized Jack in the Box was Rudy Giuliani.

As if this reveal could not get any worse, confused judge Nicole Scherzinger turned to judge Ken Jeong and said, “is that Robert Duvall?”

After confirming to his confused, uninformed colleague that the unmasked man is certainly not revered character actor Robert Duvall, Jeong said, “I’m done,” and promptly exited the stage. Robert Duvall is an Academy Award-winning actor, known for his work in To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Godfather, Network, and Apocalypse Now.

Not that it’s important, but Giuliani explained that he came on The Masked Singer because he just had a granddaughter, which is an interesting way of saying “this was the only gig that I, an enemy to my own country, could get.” The show was filmed in January, and Deadline confirmed Giuliani was a participant in February.

On Wednesday night, Nicolas Cage made his first national talk show appearance in 14 years on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent star came loaded with the kind of stories that only Nic Cage can tell. After dazzling Kimmel with his shiny silver chrome suit, Cage talked about living in Las Vegas for the past 17 years. (He also admitted that he may have been there for “tax purposes.”) According to Cage, he had planted such firm roots in the “small town and big city” that he was all set to build a movie studio until a certain electric car maker screwed the whole deal.

Via IndieWire:

“I tried to get a movie studio built there, and then Elon Musk came in,” Cage said, “and all the money I got for the movie studio – I got $80 million — they put it into the Tesla cooperation. Which then, ironically, drained all the water out of the city.”

Cage joked, “I almost had it.”

If Cage is trying to make Musk so mad that he tries to buy him now, too, hats off. Solid plan. However, Cage followed up his tale of losing out on building a movie studio by regaling Kimmel with a gambling tale. While the actor says he’s not big on gambling, he did have a crazy hot streak in the Bahamas. The actor said he was just feeling the “mojo” that nothing could go wrong for him that night, so he headed to the Roulette table where he proceeded to turn $200 into $20,000 in 30 minutes.

However, Cage didn’t pocket the money or convert it into a dinosaur skull. Instead, he took the cash to a local orphanage, met all of the children, and slapped his winnings into the hands of the headmistress. After that, he said he’s never gambled again so he wouldn’t tarnish that special moment.

(Via IndieWire)

At HBO Max’s For Your Consideration event last night, kicking off Emmys season, the Euphoria cast made a glamorous appearance. Among the cast in attendance was Alexa Demie, who plays the scrappy Maddy Perez on the show.

Earlier this year, Demie was one of several actresses who allegedly auditioned for the upcoming Madonna biopic, among the likes of Bebe Rexha, Florence Pugh, and Julia Garner. The audition process was said to be thorough, with the actresses said to have gone through an intense boot camp to learn the choreography.

In an interview with Variety‘s Mark Malkin, Demie coyly shrugged when asked if she auditioned to play Madonna and went through the boot camp.

“Do you know who Madonna is?” Malkin playfully asked.

“Of course, I know who Madonna is,” Demie replied.

“Have you ever met Madonna?” He asked.

“Yes, I’ve met Madonna,” she replied. “She’s an icon.”

Malkin then proceeds to ask Demie what her favorite Madonna song is. Demie said, “There are so many. I really like this one that maybe not a lot of people know, called ‘I Want You.’ She has an orchestral version that’s amazing.”

“I Want You” is a cover of a Marvin Gaye song from his album of the same name. Madonna re-recorded the song with Massive Attack as part of a tribute album called Inner City Blues: The Music Of Marvin Gaye. The orchestral version appears on Madonna’s Something To Remember compilation album, containing several of Madge’s iconic ballads.

Also rumored to have auditioned for the Madonna biopic are fellow Euphoria actresses Sydney Sweeney, who plays Cassie Howard, and Barbie Ferreira, who plays Kat Hernandez.

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

Every move Dyson Daniels has made from the time he was 14 years old has been done with one goal in mind: making it to the NBA. From going to the NBA Global Academy at the Australian Institute of Sport to joining the NBA’s G League Ignite team ahead of its 2021-22 campaign, Daniels’ life has had one very clear objective.

This summer, that will all come to fruition. Daniels, a jumbo Australian guard, is expected to hear Adam Silver read his name early in the 2022 NBA Draft. He had a basketball in his hands from the time he was seven months old — according to his father, North Carolina native and Aussie hoops standout Ricky Daniels, he could only push it around the house — and while he’s gotten exponentially better at dribbling since then, the game has been such a constant in his life that it’s hard to imagine him doing anything else.

“I grew up playing basketball,” Daniels tells Dime. “I started when I was five years old. Dad played four years at NC State and then came up to Australia and played in the senior league in Australia. So for me, I’ve always been in basketball.”

Ricky played his basketball for the Bendigo Braves in the southeastern state of Victoria. He was named league MVP in the former Australian Basketball Association in 1999 and 2000 — Dyson was born a few years later — and in 2011, the club retired his number. A malleable, high IQ basketball player who played inside and out, Ricky would have a trio of fans in the stands who would cheer a little louder for him than the rest of the crowd — sons Dash, Dyson, and Kai.

After games, Ricky’s boys would make their way onto the floor and shoot around, even when that wasn’t always allowed.

“I think being around the basketball environment all the time, watching dad play, that made me love basketball more, and every time after he’d finish his game, we’d go shoot on the court after, even if we weren’t allowed to,” Dyson recalls. “We’d always have to get told off five times before we stopped shooting on the basketball court.”

While basketball was the first (and lasting) love, Daniels dabbled in a bit of everything throughout the sports calendar. There was cricket and tennis — the latter was the sport his mom, Brikitta, played. He credits soccer for helping him develop the lateral quickness that has turned him into a promising defensive prospect, and while he played Aussie rules until he was a teenager, he ultimately decided to focus his time and energy into playing hoops. He suited up for Victoria’s under-12 state team alongside his friend Josh Giddey, won a silver medal, and has been racking up appearances with state teams of various age levels and appearances for Australian youth national teams ever since.

At 15, Daniels signed a professional contract with the Braves, taking the floor for the team that has his father’s name and number hanging above it. A year later and he went to the NBA Global Academy’s outpost at the Australian Institute of Sport, which presented a unique opportunity to learn how to play under the NBA’s umbrella.

“I knew I wanted to be there because if I wanted to take basketball to where I wanted to, which was NBA, I knew that that was the place that I had to get to get my best development,” he says. “And then I spent two years there where I got a lot, like really, really good development.”

That development opened up three doors when it came time to choose a next step. There was the path his dad traveled en route to a professional career, college basketball, a tried-and-true way for young athletes with aspirations of playing in the NBA to get to where they want to go. There was exploring opportunities with Australia’s top professional league, the National Basketball League, which in recent years has created a springboard to the NBA called the Next Stars program and has seen players like Giddey and LaMelo Ball become lottery picks.

And then, there’s the newest option of the bunch: the recently-formed NBA G League Ignite team. Launched in 2020 as a path for precocious basketball players with an eye on making it to the league, the Ignite team puts teenagers in a basketball-obsessed environment from the jump with the primary objective being their development.

While he stressed that there would have been benefits to the NBL or college basketball, going to a place so hyper-focused on his development appealed Daniels, as did getting the chance to sit down with G League president Shareef Abdur-Rahim and the Ignite team’s coaches. While he was hired a few months after Daniels decided to join the team, Ignite head coach Jason Hart has a theory for why it’s an appealing destination for players of Daniels’ caliber.

“You only come here if you think you have what it takes, obviously, to be a pro,” Hart says. “And that’s very important. Because if you have any self-doubt, this is not the place for you. So all these young guys that are here, they feel a certain way about themselves.

“Now, just because you’re young, and you’re not ready to be a pro at 18, that doesn’t mean you won’t become an NBA player,” he continues. “I mean, Tim Duncan was in college for four years. So these guys are just a step ahead of those guys, because they believe they’re pros, and right now they’re more physically gifted than the majority of the kids in college at their age.”

From the first time he watched Daniels go through a skill workout and saw a 6’6 player with guard skills, Hart knew he was working with a potentially special basketball player. While the physical tools are easy to see, for Hart, it’s been Daniels’ mentality and workmanlike approach that have impressed him the most.

“The thing that stands out for Dyson and his teammates is that they’re so professional, they come to work every day, and they’re dependable,” Hart says. “And one thing you have to be in the NBA is those things: dependable, and you have to have availability, meaning not hurt a lot. He brings that to the table every day, and for that to be done at such a young age is pretty remarkable.”

In Daniels’ eyes, the bet he has made that the Ignite team would place his development at the forefront of his experience has paid off. Getting tossed into games with NBA officiating, NBA rules, NBA coaches, and most importantly, NBA players gave him the wake-up call that comes for many young players: he had to work on getting stronger. But beyond that, Daniels learned that he had to be able to take the strength he’d build up and apply it on the basketball court.

In the first few games, the physicality and ball pressure he faced from defenders made him realize he needed to work on tightening up his handle. Getting to the rim and finishing through contact would be huge, too. Under the careful eyes of Rod Strickland, the team’s program manager, and Thomas Scott, its head of player development, Daniels believes those skills have come a long way from the time he joined the club. Hart identifies his ability to handle the ball when asked to name Daniels’ biggest area of improvement from day one.

He’s still working on his shooting, believing in his mechanics and is driven to become a “great shooter,” although he is quick to mention, “I don’t think I’m a bad shooter, but it’s definitely something that I need to work on.” There’s still plenty of faith in his ability to make things happen on offense in the meantime, particularly when he’s getting downhill and using his feel as a passer to set up his opponents or his floater as a way to score.

Daniels’ greatest impact, though, comes on the other end of the floor. Hart lavishes praise onto his young guard’s defense, saying his ability to pester opponents is his best attribute. When asked about the players he likes to study the closest, Daniels immediately jumps to Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton as a fellow jumbo playmaker and Chicago’s Alex Caruso for his ability to read the game and move his feet to stay in front of opposing players.

“He’s a premier defensive guard,” Hart says. “I think he’s one of the best defensive guards in the whole draft. So, I think that’s what the scouts are enamored with, his innate ability to guard the ball on and off.”

For Daniels, the challenge of being able to turn defense into offense and check players revered for their ability to win games is something he relishes.

“I’m first and foremost a defender,” he says. “I like to lock people up, guard the best player every night, get deflections, get steals, and offense is a lot easier if you play good defense. You’re able to get out and run, you don’t have to run plays and stuff like that.”

For a young player like Daniels, being in a professional environment has some advantages in accelerating his maturation process as well. He admits to dwelling on off nights too much, at times losing sleep over them, but is learning how to navigate the ups and downs of a professional season by keeping an even keel. Daniels lauds the coaches and players around him who are able to uplift him when he goes through a rough patch, and notes he’s able to contact one of the team’s mental health professionals if need be. And beyond those resources provided by the Ignite, he can always count on the expertise of the guy who’s been there with him from the jump.

“That’s when he gets a text from dad that says, ‘Let it go, move on to the next game,’” Ricky says with a smile.

Daniels is the kind of player who will never be satisfied with where he is. A gym and film junkie who loves learning about the game just as much as he loves getting extra shots up after practice, Daniels’ dreams have evolved considerably from the time he was a 14 year old hoping to make it to the NBA.

That is, for all intents and purposes, going to happen, so he’s set a new goal: he wants to be great. At the 2022 NBA All-Star Game in Cleveland, Daniels participated in the Rising Star game on Friday night, then got to take in the festivities on Saturday and Sunday. He made it a point to get “used to the feeling of the norm of what it’s like to be at an All-Star weekend,” and while the bitter cold of Cleveland was a bit of a nuisance, he plans on participating in the NBA’s premier midseason event as his career goes on.

It’s very easy to say he’s going to accomplish that, it’s another thing to actually do it. But after spending a season around him, Hart is confident that Daniels’ desire to succeed at the highest level is the sort of thing that gives him a chance to stick around and potentially win a championship some day.

Less than a decade ago, when the average episode of Game of Thrones cost $6 million, co-showrunners Dave Benioff and D.B. Weiss had to practically beg HBO for an extra $2 million to make “Blackwater” as epic as they imagined it. How quaint. By the final season, every episode of Thrones had a $15 million price tag. The Mandalorian is also around $15 million, while Disney+’s Marvel Cinematic Universe shows like WandaVision, Loki, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier reportedly have a $25 million budget.

Stranger Things is about to blow them out of the (Black)water (Bay). In a fascinating article about how Netflix‘s days of “carefree spending” might be over, the Wall Street Journal revealed how much every episode of the sci-fi show’s fourth season will cost.

The holy grail for Netflix is to find shows like Squid Game that are inexpensive and yet become hits. Virgin River, at a cost of roughly $3 million per episode, is a relatively low-budget soap opera with no big stars, but has been a huge success for Netflix. That means it is more efficient than pop-culture hit Bridgerton, which costs more than three times as much, say people familiar with the streamer’s efficiency measurement. Under-the-radar, relatively low-cost hits are necessary to balance out the costs for big-ticket programming such as the special-effects-filled show Stranger Things, whose new season has a per-episode cost of $30 million, according to people close to the show.

At $30 million/episode, Stranger Things doesn’t appear to cost that much more than Loki‘s $25 million. But the difference is that Loki season one was only six episodes long; season four of Stranger Things has nine episodes. A single episode of Stranger Things costs as much as the last three Best Picture winners combined. That’s some Lord of the Rings-level spending.

Stranger Things returns for season four on May 27.

(Via the Wall Street Journal)

On the latest episode of The Kardashians, Kim Kardashian recalls making her debut on Saturday Night Live. Though she and ex-husband Kanye West had been separated at the time, West allegedly flew to New York City from Los Angeles to support Kardashian on her big night.

On The Kardashians, Kim said, “He literally took a coach, commercial flight, sat in a seat next to the bathroom. […] He said he didn’t sleep all night long just so he can get in town early enough to meet up with Dave [Chappelle] and go over jokes and really, like, help.”

Despite West’s efforts, the two did not reconcile, per Kim’s established boundaries. “Kanye and I are staying at separate hotels,” she said. “I’ve been really clear with him as far as, like, where we stand in our relationship.”

Before Kardashian’s appearance on SNL and before West released his 10th album, Donda, the two hadn’t spoken in eight months, as Kardashian said on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast to host Amanda Hirsch.

“We went about eight months without even speaking to each other at the beginning of the divorce,” Kardashian said. “And then, you know, we started talking again and I went to the Donda premiere. He would still see the kids and stuff, just him and I took a minute of not talking. And I think it all, in relationships, it’ll be like that. I only hope for, I hope we are the ‘co-parenting goals’ at the end of the day.”

Earlier this month, West dropped out of a headlining slot at Coachella. Rapper Fivio Foreign tweeted that West “is on a Island relaxing clear’n his mind & healing from all the stress of Society.. He appreciates the support for the Album [Foreign’s debut, B.I.B.L.E., on which West is featured and credited as a producer] & the response.”

The Philadelphia 76ers are one game away from the Eastern Conference Semifinals after a thrilling comeback win over the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday night. Philly picked up the 104-101 win in overtime thanks to the heroics of Joel Embiid — beyond once again putting up numbers with a 33-point and 13-rebound performance, Embiid hit a game-winning turnaround three with less than a second left on the clock to get the Sixers one game away from a sweep.

As Embiid walked off the floor in Toronto, he ran into noted Raptors fan and guy who has courtside seats for their home games, Drake. The two apparently went back-and-forth with one another during the game, according to Tobias Harris.

Video eventually popped up of Embiid and Drake exchanging pleasantries after the game, with Embiid insisting that Drake is in his usual seat for Game 4 so he can witness a sweep.

“That’s what you call a f*cking superstar,” Embiid said. “Get your ass up, I’m coming for the sweep, too. You better be there.”

Drake said he would, but unsurprisingly predicted it’ll be a 3-1 series after Game 4. That game will take place on Saturday afternoon, and is scheduled to tip off at 2 p.m. ET on TNT.