Category: Worldwide

Legally speaking, there are a handful of (legitimate) reasons a person being charged with a crime could cite for having their case dismissed: No probable cause, illegal search, lost evidence, or lack of evidence are just some of them. However, the judge overseeing the case against Infowars personality Owen Shroyer might have heard a totally new one on Thursday, when Shroyer—who is being charged with two misdemeanors related to the events of January 6th—said he should not be charged with any wrongdoing because he’s like “Jesus or the Dalai Lama.”

As Pilar Melendez writes for Daily Beast:

“Prosecutors allege that the host of the Infowars program War Room With Owen Shroyer marched to the Capitol with several other Trump supporters. He was heard on a video telling the crowd: ‘Today we march for the Capitol because on this historic January 6, 2021, we have to let our Congressmen and women know, and we have to let Mike Pence know, they stole the election, we know they stole it, and we aren’t going to accept it!’ Shroyer was then seen on video on the west side of the Capitol and the top of the stairs on the east side of the federal building, according to charging documents.”

Shroyer is also offering an additional reason for having the charges against him dismissed: he’s a member of the press, and that by removing the barricades that typically stand between the Capitol building and the outside world, he was essentially being “invited” into the building by the government. Sort of like a vampire.

Prior to this, Shroyer was perhaps best known for his public outburst during Trump’s impeachment hearing. On December 9, 2019, Shroyer had to be physically removed from the U.S. Capitol (irony alert!) after he began shouting that, “We voted for Donald Trump, and they’re simply removing him because they don’t like him” and saying the Democrats had committed treason. As Deadline reported at the time, Shroyer later posted video of the incident to social media.

No word yet on whether Shroyer’s Jesus comparison tactic will work, but it seems dubious.

(Via Daily Beast)

Comedian Zack Fox had previously dabbled in rap with mischievous singles like “Fafo,” “Jesus Is the One,” and “Square Up,” but as it turns out, those were just practice for him to lock in and release a full EP. That EP, Shut The F*ck Up Talking To Me, arrived last night and across its nine tracks, Fox turns out to be every bit as adept (and profane) a rapper as he is a standup comic.

Just check out “Mind Your Business,” an ’80s-R&B-sampling two-stepper that finds Fox slinging witty, wild one-liners like “I’m smokin’ big pressure, call that hypertension,” and “I took the top off the whip, circumcision.” Meanwhile, on the EP’s title track, Fox employs a soulful beat courtesy of The Alchemist to spit a multi-syllabic string of punchlines worthy of inclusion in the long list of hardcore rap artists that Alchemist has produced for in the past couple of years.

“Don’t get embarrassed tryna snatch my carats,” Fox warns, “My n***s barbaric, sh*t could get ugly as f*ck like Ed Sheeran.” No target is safe from his hilarious threats as he reps Atlanta, references wrestling, and delivers one smirking haymaker after another on his thoroughly impressive debut tape. You can check it out in full below.

As the NBA season approaches and the preseason comes to a close, we’ll be taking a look at the player on each team that holds the key to unlocking their full potential.

For the Cleveland Cavaliers, success this season is probably going to be defined more by how key players look than by their record, as this still feels like a team that is a couple pieces away from being in the conversation for play-in/playoff spots in the East. There isn’t a player on the roster that has more question marks coming into this season than their biggest offseason acquisition, Lauri Markkanen, who the Cavs hope can bring them some much needed floor spacing while also continuing to grow in other areas.

Markkanen is a career 36.6 percent three-point shooter, including a career-best 40.2 percent last year, and for a Cavs team that had some of the worst spacing in the league a year ago, that is needed. However, it’s everything else with Markkanen that remains a question, from defense to what else he provides offensively beyond a spot-up option on the perimeter. He’s not a particularly good connector with a career 6.6 assist percentage and a 9.0 turnover percentage, but he has scoring upside beyond the three-point ball. Last year was, by far, his best shooting season inside the arc, shooting 58.2 percent from two-point range, buoyed by a 55.3 percent mark from 3-10 feet, per Basketball-Reference. That ability as not just a rim finisher but someone capable of scoring from just outside the restricted area is important for his positional versatility and effectiveness inside despite not being a particularly strong big man.

On defense, he has a ways to go, as he’s not quick enough to deal with fours who can put the ball on the floor, but also isn’t a real rim-deterrent when at the center position. Part of J.B. Bickerstaff’s job is going to be figuring out how to make Markkanen lineups work on that end, which many be helped by the fact that he’s likely to be paired with Jarrett Allen and rookie Evan Mobley for most of his minutes, who are both quality defenders. The Cavs invested heavily in Markkanen and gave up their most versatile defender in Larry Nance Jr. to get him, which puts plenty of pressure on the fifth-year man out of Finland to tap further into his potential now that he’s out of Chicago and into the new situation he so desperately wanted to be in.

His presence could help the Cavs backcourt to have more room to attack the paint and work in space, but if the defense is untenable, then there will be plenty of questions about whether Cleveland made the right move this summer.

If you’re going to make a video for a song called “Down South” featuring Houston hard-hitter Maxo Kream and Dallas star Yella Beezy, it’s only right that you make that video a blowout celebration of all things Texas car culture. That’s exactly what Wale does for his Paul Wall-sampling single from Folarin II, throwing a parking lot party with all the candy paint, hydraulics, and horsepower he could fit into four minutes.

The video is also crammed with legends of Texas hip-hop, including Bun B, Slim Thug, and more. As the trio’s guests gyrate to the no-doubt booming bass from the circled-up, showstopping slabs, the rappers perform their verses and sip from styrofoam cups, completing the image of a good, old-fashioned Texas shindig. Interestingly, “Down South” is the third video from the Folarin II rollout, but it was the first single. Wale also dropped videos for “Poke It Out,” featuring J. Cole, and “Angles” with Chris Brown.

Watch Wale’s ‘Down South’ video featuring Maxo Kream and Yella Beezy above. You can read Uproxx’s autumn digital cover story on Wale here.

Folarin II is due 10/22 via Warner Records and MMG. You can pre-save it here.

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

Bo Burnham’s Inside is one of the year’s most talked-about comedy specials, and similarly, the soundtrack album, Inside (The Songs), is inarguably 2021’s biggest comedy album. It’s currently No. 1 on the Billboard Comedy Albums chart and has been for 18 weeks, the entire time it’s been on the chart. It also became his first top-10 album on the all-genres Billboard 200 chart, achieving a peak at No. 7. Phoebe Bridgers also covered “That Funny Feeling” and her recording was one of the best-selling songs on the week of its release.

While Billboard thinks Inside (The Songs) is a comedy album, The Recording Academy doesn’t feel the same way: Billboard reports that the album was deemed ineligible to compete for the Best Comedy Album award at the 2022 Grammys. It will compete, however, for the Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media title.

Meanwhile, Inside (The Songs) was also submitted for Album Of The Year, while “All Eyes On Me” was submitted for Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Best Pop Solo Performance, and Best Song Written For Visual Media. Inside itself was also submitted for Best Music Film.

It remains to be seen what nominations Burnham will actually earn, as the list of Grammy nominees is set to be released on November 23.

This decision comes shortly after the Academy decided that Kacey Musgraves’ Star-Crossed isn’t eligible for any country Grammys.

While stopping by CNBC to promote the upcoming season premiere of Succession Season 3, Brian Cox weighed in on the current state of the American media landscape, and he is clearly not a fan of Fox News. On the hit HBO series Cox plays Logan Roy, a Rupert Murdoch-esque titan who lords over a media empire with an iron fist. In real life, Cox has no stomach for the tactics employed by Murdoch, but he’s also not exactly thrilled with the competition either.

He’s also not exactly telling Fox News to “f*ck off” (though he’s perfectly willing to say that on occasion), but he does have two choice words for them: “the devil.” Via Mediaite:

He had some light criticisms of CNN, saying the cable news network is “clearly the same story again and again and again” but acknowledging “I love CNN, ’cause I’m fairly left-wing.”

“And then, Fox News,” Cox added, “I don’t even go there, because that’s, like, the devil.”

He held up his fingers like a cross as he said it.

However, as one “media mogul” observing another, Cox said he doesn’t think Murdoch believes in anything that Fox News is pushing, and he’s simply exploiting the market for right wing vitriol in America.

“Back in the U.K., there’s more debate. There’s more nuance in the news,” Cox explained. “It’s not as cut and dry… but also I understand where it comes from because this country desperately needs alignment. And so you can see why these channels have developed the way they have.”

In keeping with the modern trend in hip-hop, Young Thug’s newly released second(!) album, Punk, is a star-studded affair on which the trap experimentalist is accompanied by a plethora of guests from across the genre. However, unlike his previous release, So Much Fun, he expands the range of artists he taps to help him fill time, including newcomers like ASAP Rocky, Doja Cat, and Mac Miller among his frequent collaborators like Drake, Gunna, and Future. He also reunites with J. Cole, Juice WRLD, and Post Malone after working with them on some of their biggest singles.

Thug, who officially kicked off the promotion for his latest album with his first-ever NPR Tiny Desk Concert alongside rock drummer Travis Barker, rolled out the album in a most unusual way, only releasing one single, “Tick Tock,” and playing new songs at places like Givenchy’s Paris Fashion Week show and in the backseats of Lyft drivers’ cars. And speaking of cars, his release party stunt of trashing a brand-new Rolls-Royce with baseball bats alongside Gunna and Metro Boomin drew both attention and criticism. However, judging from the fact that many fans on Twitter freely admitted to staying up later than usual for the release (midnight Pacific, three hours later than most New Music Friday releases), it would seem that these tactics had an overall positive effect on the album’s reception.

You can check out some of the new songs from Punk above and listen to the full album courtesy of Atlantic and YSL here.

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

Twenty years helps to put a lot of things in perspective in life, especially music. This week on Indiecast, Steve and Ian are reflecting on the musical landscape of 2001 and how it has evolved in the two decades since. The discussion revolves around four specific categories: albums they loved in 2001 that they longer care about, albums they didn’t care about in 2001 that are now important to them, the overall most important albums of 2001, and their personal favorite albums of 2001. From Daft Punk’s Discovery and Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory to Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American and Guided By Voices’ Isolation Drills, this episode is an exercise in nostalgia and reevaluation for the music that helped to shape the 2000’s.

In lieu of this week’s Recommendation Corner, we’re taking a moment to congratulate Ian on his wedding and wish him a wonderful honeymoon! We’ll be back with more recommendations next week.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 61 on Spotify below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

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

In a memo defending Dave Chappelle’s The Closer, which has been widely criticized for its transphobic jokes, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos mentioned that the streamer is “working hard to ensure marginalized communities aren’t defined by a single story.” He brought up Sex Education, Orange Is the New Black, Control Z, and Hannah Gadsby.

Gadsby wishes he hadn’t.

“Hey Ted Sarandos. Just a quick note to let you know that I would prefer if you didn’t drag my name into your mess. Now I have to deal with even more of the hate and anger that Dave Chappelle’s fans like to unleash on me every time Dave gets 20 million dollars to process his emotionally stunted partial word view,” the comedian, whose Nanette special on Netflix won a Peabody and an Emmy, wrote on Instagram. Gadsby continued:

“You didn’t pay me nearly enough to deal with the real world consequences of the hate speech dog whistling you refuse to acknowledge, Ted. Fuck you and your amoral algorithm cult… I do shits with more back bone than you. That’s just a joke! I definitely didn’t cross a line because there isn’t one.”

Netflix’s transgender employees and co-worker allies are planning a walkout on October 20 in response to the special. “I encourage us all to state clearly that we, as Netflix employees are stunning not simply when we are doing the work that our roles demand of us but also when we challenge the very principles of our company,” the message reads.

You can read Gadsby’s Instagram post below.

Donald Trump is not exactly what most people would consider a rational man. Nor is he comfortable with admitting defeat, as evidenced by the fact that he has still not conceded the 2020 presidential election. Together, those two characteristics can make for a pretty explosive combination, as Jimmy Kimmel explained on Thursday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live:

“The angry orange baby’s throwing another fit over the election he can’t admit he lost. He wrote ‘If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24. It’s the single most important thing for Republicans to do.’ Did Nancy Pelosi write this for him? It seems like he’s telling Republicans not to vote.”

Which, according to the Daily Beast—who recently described Trump as “the biggest loose cannon in the world”—is exactly what he’s threatening. As Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis wrote:

“This should be interpreted as a serious threat because it speaks to the very efficacy of voting. Trump is not saying that he will tell his voters to stay home in 2022 to punish Republicans. He is making a much more furtive and veiled threat: He will tell the voters not to waste their time voting, unless, of course, other Republican politicians (a) buy into the bogus premise that the election was stolen from him, and (b) support whatever election ‘reforms’ he says will prevent that from happening again.”

To Kimmel, this “threat” is both ridiculous—and kind of hilarious—as it “brings up the age-old question, which is: How do you solve a problem you made up?”

You can watch the full clip above, beginning around the 3:30 mark.