Category: Worldwide

Now that Coi Leray has featured on the 2021 XXL Freshman class, she’s got more eyes on her than ever. She makes an effort to satisfy the demand for a follow-up hit to her breakout “No More Parties” with her new single, “At The Top,” courtesy of a beat by hitmaking producer Mustard and fellow Freshman honoree Kodak Black.

Featuring a bright, uptempo beat, “At The Top” finds Coi Leray enjoying her newfound fame while reminding listeners that the only thing that’s changed is the number in her bank account. She uses a variety of flows from the lilting melody of the hook to a Playboi Carti-esque, clipped cadence at the beginning of her verse. Kodak, who was recently sentenced to probation in his 2016 sexual assault case, provides a boastful verse to bring the back end of the song home, bragging that he’s “eating branzino fish.”

Coi’s big year has also included a few feature verses as her contemporaries employed her to add her infectious charm to the remix of “Options” by Earthgang and Wale and to DDG’s “Impatient.”

Listen to Coi Leray’s “At The Top” featuring Kodak Black and Mustard above.

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

During a new interview to promote F9 finally revving its way into theaters on Friday, long-time Fast & Furious star Jordana Brewster revealed the actress she most wanted to recruit to the franchise, and almost did until another mega property swooped in. While responding to a question about director Justin Lin’s dream to get Golden Girls legend Betty White behind the wheel, Brewster revealed that she and co-star Michelle Rodriguez were concocting a plan to get Fleabag writer and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge into the cast, but James Bond beat them to the punch. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

We were like, “She would be so awesome.” And then we were like, “Damnit! They snagged her.” I think she would be great, because Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) bring so much humor. Which I think you need. There’s so much intensity within the film and so many times you watch these six-minute action sequences and you are just like dying. And then Roman and Tej will lighten it up. I feel like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s British, ironic humor would add a lot.

Hey, maybe there’s still time. Waller-Bridge’s work with Bond is over, and she’s filming Indiana Jones 5 right now, so there might be an opening in her schedule for the next Fast & Furious movie. Better yet, get her in a car with Betty White, and the tickets practically sell themselves. You almost don’t even need the rest of the cast at that point. Let her break the fourth wall. While driving through a real wall. Is anyone writing this down? Vin? Anyone?

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Former Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle has gotten his wish. According to Shams Charania of The Athletic and Tim MacMahon of ESPN, Jason Kidd will return to Dallas to become the franchise’s next head coach, joining former Nike executive Nico Harrison as part of a reshuffling in a few separate areas of the team.

News of the Mavericks’ interest in Kidd, who has spent the last two years as an assistant with the Los Angeles Lakers, has been circulating for a few days, with Carlisle, recently hired by the Indiana Pacers, indicating that he wanted Kidd to get the job due to his similarities with Luka Doncic. On Thursday evening, reports began popping up that Harrison would join Dallas’ front office, with the team having an eye on bringing Kidd on board.

Kidd was drafted by the Mavericks and spent two stints with the team. During his second spell in the Lone Star State, Kidd was the point guard on the Mavs side that won the only championship in franchise history. His coaching career is not quite as decorated — Kidd spent a year as the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets before joining the Milwaukee Bucks, where he spent three and a half seasons before getting fired. For his career, Kidd has accrued a 183-190 record as a head coach.

Spiced rum and summer vibes are great partners. While spiced rum is supposed to be spicy, it’s often far more on the sweeter side of things. Sure cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and maybe some chili pepper make appearances. But, you’re really paying for a sweeter dark rum with the harder edges sanded down by added sugar, vanilla, and brown spices and barks. All of that makes spiced rum the perfect hot-weather mixer.

I’m pretty clearly on the record as not digging flavored booze. I generally ignore spiced rums and go straight for the old dark rums on the shelf. That doesn’t mean I don’t know them, though (I’m a professional taster after all). It’s just that I’ve never found a spiced rum to care about. This doesn’t mean they don’t matter or aren’t good or anything like that. They’re just not my jam.

Anyway, to see if I’ve been unfairly ignoring this massively popular style, I decided to do a blind taste test of eight spiced rums.

Our spiced rum lineup:

• Don Papa Masskara
• Chairman’s Reserve Spiced
• Don Q Oak Barrel Spiced
• Black Magic Black Spiced
• Bacardi Spiced
• Bayou Spiced
• Captain Morgan Original Spiced Gold
• The Original Sailor Jerry Spiced

The ranking of these is simple. I ordered them according to which bottles tasted the best, had the most nuance, and actually delivered on being spicy and not just sweet. That’s it. And hey, if one of these piques your interest, click on the prices to try it yourself.

Part 1: The Tasting

Taste 1

Tasting Notes:

This was pure Circus Peanuts and/or Haribo Banana soft candies — like, exactly — on the nose. The taste had a bit of that banana candy with a serious sweetness but real hints of bright orange citrus, slightly bitter citrus, and very mild honey did drive through that sweetness.

The end had a distinct red chili pepper heat with an almost woody/dry feel to it but ended up sickly sweet.

Taste 2

Tasting Notes:

Hello, Sasparilla! This would make The Stranger in The Big Lebowski say, “Yee-ha!”

The palate merges through bitter orange peels, spiced orange oils, dry raisins, and Red Hots with a serious cinnamon burn. A burnt sugar arrives late and gives this a nose and palate that’s exactly like a candy store at Christmas. It’s all dark barks, oranges, and fruit cakes with a lingering cinnamon afterburn.

Taste 3

Tasting Notes:

This smells like a bourbon with hints of creamy vanilla, soft leather, a touch of cedar. The palate has a clear and bitter roasted coffee bean note with a dry woodiness leading towards a very rich and buttery toffee hard candy. The sweetness slowly fades towards a spicy, dry tobacco leaf with a proper and robust finish.

Taste 4

Tasting Notes:

There’s a nice mix of soft leather, raisins, and … I want to say … light Caro syrup. There’s a cognac vibe that leads towards a sweet dark cocoa mid-palate. That cocoa quickly fades into a sweet pear candy that drives towards a cinnamon tobacco finish with a hint of vanilla.

Taste 5

Tasting Notes:

This is a fruit bomb on the nose with the brightness of a tropical fruit salad next to a whisper of cinnamon and leather. The taste is thin with hints of vanilla and almond but mostly apple Jolly Rancher. There’s a note of honey candy but the end is very light and the sip kind of just disappears.

Taste 6

Tasting Notes:

This opens with a mild note of tar on the nose leading towards bananas cooked off in browned butter and served on cinnamon crackers next to a hint of soft leather. The taste luxuriates in a maple syrup sweetness that’s countered by a mix of cloves, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, and plenty of vanilla. The spice leans slightly peppery as the finish brings about some candied fruit and a full-on holiday cake vibe.

Taste 7

Tasting Notes:

This is thin. The nose has a dash of vanilla extract and a very mild spice leading towards sweet hard toffee candies. Those candies soften to a very sweet caramel and that’s about it. The end is non-existent but leaves you with that note of vanilla and toffee/caramel.

Taste 8

Tasting Notes:

Woah. This is all black tar — that feels like it’s boiling hot — on the nose. The palate has a bit of vanilla that leads towards a black pepper spice and a little note of fruit. The end is very thin and light with no real lingering sense of anything except the smell of that black tar.

Part 2: The Ranking

8. The Original Sailor Jerry Spiced — Taste 8

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $20

The Rum:

Tattoo artist Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins is the inspiration behind this brand. The rum in the bottles is a mix of Caribbean rums from undisclosed warehouses. The spice mix is unknown but tends to be cinnamon and vanilla heavy.

Bottom Line:

That heavy tar nose and thin body didn’t do this one any favors. I really can’t see using this as a sipper. But I could see burying it in a tropical cocktail, maybe. Probably not though.

7. Captain Morgan Original Spiced Gold — Taste 7

ABV: 35%

Average Price: $25 (1-liter bottle)

The Rum:

This rum is one of the most popular drinks in the world. Yet, there’s not a whole lot of practical information about what’s in the bottle. It’s bottled in the U.S. Virgin Islands from rums likely sourced from Jamaica and Guyana. The spice blend is undisclosed but leans heavily into vanilla and allspice.

Bottom Line:

I mean, this is made to be mixed with Coke. So you really can’t fault this for being one-note in that respect. This isn’t pretending to be anything other than a sweet, vanilla-driven mixer. It’s just so thin that’s it’s really hard to care about it.

6. Bacardi Spiced — Taste 5

ABV: 35%

Average Price: $15

The Rum:

Bacardi Spiced is a classic mix of unaged and aged rums from Bacardi’s Puerto Rican stills. The exact spice blend in play isn’t disclosed but we know there’s vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg in the mix thanks to the label.

Bottom Line:

Fruit candy is fine as a flavor. But when that’s all there is, it’s pretty disappointing. Still, this was approachable but very thin. It 100 percent feels like it’s built to be mixed with Coke and, again, that’s fine.

5. Don Papa Masskara — Taste 1

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $98

The Rum:

This Filippino rum is started with local “black gold” molasses. The juice is aged for seven years in oak under the shadow of Mount Kanaloan. The rum is then infused with calamansi citrus (a sort of half lime and half mandarin Filippino fruit).

Bottom Line:

The sweetness in this was so powerful. Still, there were clear notes of citrus and chili pepper under all that sweetness. It’s not bad but way too sweet for me. It was also bold and full-bodied without that extreme thinness of the last three on this ranking.

4. Black Magic Black Spiced — Taste 4

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $16

The Rum:

There aren’t a lot of details about this rum. We know it’s from Barbados and bottled in the U.S. The juice is purported to be a blend of light and dark rums with a touch of caramel coloring.

Bottom Line:

I wrote “not bad…” in the margin of my tasting notes. The softness, that mild leather, and that hint of cocoa were all very enticing. I’d definitely revisit this in a cocktail but probably not as a sipper.

3. Chairman’s Reserve Spiced — Taste 2

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $30

The Rum:

This Saint Lucia rum is a classic, five-year-old rum that’s aged in ex-bourbon barrels. The rum is infused with a mix of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, vanilla, coconut, allspice, lemon, orange, and bwa bandé (the bark from richeria trees which is an Indigenous Carib aphrodisiac).

Bottom Line:

The nose on this is pure sasparilla in the best way. The flavors on the palate were dialed in and distinct. I could actually see sipping this on the rocks or in a highball pretty easily.

2. Bayou Spiced — Taste 6

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $20

The Rum:

This Louisiana craft rum keeps things local. The rum is made with locally grown sugar cane. The spice mix is undisclosed but comprised of spices all grown in Louisiana. The water the juice is cut with comes from a local spring, adding a final layer of uniqueness to the expression.

Bottom Line:

This felt very well-rounded while kind of hitting on all the elements of the other spiced rums while staying unique. It also felt like a real workhorse rum that’ll shine in a cocktail or over the rocks while holding onto its depth and identity.

1. Don Q Oak Barrel Spiced — Taste 3

ABV: 45%

Average Price: $30

The Rum:

Puerto Rico’s Don Q Oak Barrel Spiced is a dark rum blend of three to six-year-old barrels. The rums are spiced with vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove. The juice is then proofed to a fairly higher-proof (for a spiced rum anyway) of 45 percent.

Bottom Line:

This was clearly the most refined and drinkable spiced rum. It wasn’t even close really. I’ll fully admit that this rum’s flavor profile leaning towards bourbon notes helped it win. But this felt both like a real drink while also being nicely complex. I wouldn’t hesitate to pour this over some rocks and sip on it all day long under the shade of a tree on a hot summer day.

I can also see it working wonders in any number of cocktails.

Part 3: Final Thoughts

I can’t say there were too many surprises in this tasting. These rums are all way more sweet than spicy, but I already knew to expect that.

The top three were all pretty fine in their own ways and I could see getting into them a bit more, playing around with cocktails, and just enjoying them every now and then.

Overall, I’m glad I found the Don Q spiced rum. It’s a nice break from all the bourbon in my life and feels like a great accompaniment to the summer days and nights ahead. That’s my only “must try” from this lineup.

In the fifth episode of The Ringer’s No Skips podcast — the one about DMX’s debut album It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot — the show’s hosts make an unsettling, insightful, and surprisingly comforting observation. Shea Serrano, author of The Rap Year Book and superfan of the film Blood In, Blood Out (his Twitter profile picture is Damian Chapa’s Miklo, which still causes no shortage of confusion among that app’s users), points out that DMX’s baseline for concern is the threat of death. In other words, nothing phases the Dark Man; any insinuation of potential loss or harm pales in comparison to the thought of his ultimate demise.

Co-host Brandon “Jinx” Jenkins, a veteran journalist who most recently profiled J. Cole for Slam magazine’s June/July 2021 cover (the first time an entertainer has accomplished this feat, although technically Cole also counts as a pro hooper), is blown away by Shea’s observation, and the two embark on a long aside in which they contemplate several hypothetical iterations of this newly discovered maxim. It’s thoroughly entertaining, it’s instructive, it’s funny as all hell; it’s everything a podcast should be. I am not a podcast guy by any means, but I have been locked in. Every Thursday when a new episode drops, I am locked in, eager to hear what sharp witticisms or goofy tangents these two intriguing hosts are willing to share.

The show is, ostensibly, about hip-hop — specifically, the albums that helped make hip-hop what it is today, the seismic, landscape-altering, culture-defining meteorites that seemed to fall from someplace beyond our atmosphere to throw up massive mushroom clouds of cosmic dust and rearrange everything we think we know about The Way Things Are. The two hosts, who couldn’t be more different, yet have this one thing in common — a deep, lasting love of hip-hop and an overlapping existence with its most explosive era — explore the impacts of albums like Lil Kim’s Hard Core, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, MAAD City, and most recently, Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt, but they also joke about basketball, movies, and being kids in the ’90s, all while roundly abusing their effects-laden producer Kerm (Jonathan Kermah) and taking cues from Deena Morrison, who presides over silly debates and drops gems of wisdom throughout each episode while keeping them in line.

When I was given the opportunity to interview Shea and Jinx about the show over Zoom, I leaped at it; after all, the thing they have in common with each other, I have in common with them. The result was, as expected, every bit as hilarious and insightful as their show, with all the deviations, non-sequiturs, in-jokes, and surprising, sharp insights that make their show such a joy to listen to. Check it out below.

So guys, thanks for sharing this time with me, and taking the time out of your busy schedules. I know you guys are both doing a lot. Let’s get right into it. So, No Skips. From soup to nuts, can someone please explain to me, how the show came to be?

Shea: Ew! What is that? What is that saying? “From soup to nuts?”

It’s a real saying, Shea!

Shea: That’s not a real saying, people don’t say that. Who says that?

It’s an actual saying from when they used to have soup at the beginning of dinner, and they would have a port or a sherry with warm nuts at the end. Like, dessert.

Shea: Is that a real thing? Brandon, have you ever heard of that?

Yes, I just looked it up. I specifically wanted to say it just to see what you would say.

Shea: Well, you got a reaction. Because that’s gross. That’s gross.

I don’t know how it went for Brandon. I know on my end, the idea of doing a music version of The Rewatchables had been floating around in the Ringer universe, in Slack for a while. A couple of years. TD hit me up one day and he said, hey, we’re going to do this show, No Skips. It’s like rap Rewatchables. Do you want to do it? And I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to do that. Who else is going to be on it? And they said, “Oh, we’re going to try and get Brandon Jenkins.” And then I was like, Yeah, I want to do it now. Sign me up.”

Jinx: That’s pretty much how it went for me. As soon as they said it, I was like, alright. Because I think everyone that’s a fan of The Rewatchables has sort of imagined, What would this be like for music? I was like, all right, yeah. I’ve been DM-ing Shea for like four years.

So walk me through the construction of an episode, from the conception. Like, deciding the album. How do you guys decide on the album? And then what goes into the process of making the episode?

Jinx: Before even the paperwork was done, Shea and I both went to our respective corners. We both showed up on DM like, “Yo, I made a list.” He’s like, “Yo, I made a list too.” And we both had a lot of overlap. So we’ve kind of picked a big pool of albums that we want to rock with. And then Shea, Deena, and I, and then the rest of the production team, we all just started to list out what we thought would be a dope impact. We’re basically sequencing episodes how you’d sequence an album.

Shea: We lean on Deena for a lot of that stuff. For me, I always feel comfortable being very specific in a very small window. But I’m not good at getting a big picture and being like, “Well, here’s how you make a whole thing good.” So I lean on Deanna a lot for that: To be like, “How do I make that?”

If it was just me, we would’ve done like a two-year stretch of windows of albums that came out that I only cared about. And that would be the whole thing. And Deena was like, “No, no, no, let’s build it this way.”

In a prime incident of great minds think alike, I was actually about to ask, what is the story that you’re trying to tell with each episode and the sequence?

Jinx: Shea says this thing a lot, of these moments that used to happen on the internet more frequently and less frequently now, where everyone cared about the same thing. So when we’re picking albums, it’s thinking like that. That was a big moment, when Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ came out, everyone cared about this album. And we think about trying to structure episodes like that. Like, what’s going to be the things in these episodes that everyone’s going to care about or talk about? And it might not be every category, but we’re thinking about looking at the albums like that.

So when you get Lil Wayne’s The Carter III, that’s a totally different tone than Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. Completely different. Or you get an album that’s a little slower, like Good Kid, MAAD City has a whole different ethos, tone, content. And sometimes these artists are talking about the same thing, right? Growing up or coming of age, but from these different corners of the world, different times. So for a lot of it, what we’re doing is knowing that no albums the same. So we’re not trying to approach each one in the same. Like, The Carter III is going to be a way more insane episode than Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, MAAD City, because Wayne’s music is so much more insane.

Shea: Yeah, that sounds right. The primary goal is to just celebrate stuff that we like. And then the secret goal, the background goal is, probably, if we get to do all the albums that we want to do, we will have pretty much covered the history of rap. I think that’s, for me, the coolest part of the show is teeing it up in the beginning. Because for the middle hour and 20 minutes, it’s just me and Brandon making some jokes and having fun and doing whatever.

But in the very beginning and at the very end, it starts and Brandon does this thing, and I think that he’s the best person on the internet at doing this thing, where, in a two-minute stretch, he’s able to build out what was happening in rap at the time when this album came out and what was happening with this person when this album came out. So he does that for two minutes. And then at the end, we’re like, “Okay, this album came out 12 years ago, what has changed since then? What’s the legacy look like?”

If you were to take all of those pieces that he’s done, it’s like he’s building a map. And you’re like, “Oh, here’s the Lil Wayne section. Oh, it kind of overlaps with this Kanye section.” But just Venn diagram a little slice of it. He’s doing that with all these things. And by the end of it, he will have covered the entire history of everything. I think that’s a big-picture goal that I would like to see happen with it. But that’s what I look forward to the most because I don’t see that part when he does it. He just shows up and I’m like, “Alright, let’s go.”

One of the things I really love about this show is that you guys have a very classic, comedic duo chemistry, like an Abbott and Costello, or like Magic and Kareem, or Penn and Teller — on Nick, N-N-N, N-N-N-Nick… Just kidding. So what do you guys do when you can’t agree on an album to do, or when you can’t agree on what the perspective, or how to make this thing come together? Because you are coming from two different backgrounds, two different locations, age groups, all of that.

Shea: I don’t know that we’ve had that happen yet because the point of the show is not to agree on everything, the point of the show is to just talk about the thing that you like. I think that’s sort of what makes it the most fun is we both show up ready to celebrate a thing. The Kanye West Graduation episode will be out [after this interview]. And we show up and we start talking about it, and Brandon is like, “Oh, guess what? I really like ‘Drunk And Hot Girls.’ It’s an underrated song.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s a terrible opinion to have.” And so we’re arguing about this thing that we like, but we’re arguing because we like it in different ways. And ultimately it feels good. But it’s okay to not agree, it’s okay to just be like, “F*ck you, that’s wrong.”

So one of the things that you guys said during the Lil’ Kim episode, which really stuck with me. Jinx was really fascinated by the line that she says, “The rap Pam Grier’s here.” And that was the first moment that he knew what she was talking about. And then Shea was like, but it was a lot more fun when you had no idea and just made up wild shit. But was just how we grew up. And then kind of contrast that with, we have a world where Genius is a thing now, and kids can just look it up and they just kind of take it for granted.

Jinx: Man, that part was fun. Yeah, it’s sort of gone now. Me and Shea were actually talking about this. Yeah, just having that open field where you don’t know shit and that’s fun. Like how you used to argue sports stats and then be dead wrong. And now, there’s got to be a kid now who just pulls his phone out and you’re like, “Alright, I guess we’re all friends now.”

But I remember adding mad significance to lines. I remember interviewing Jadakiss one time. And he has this line on his second album. I think it’s on “Still Feel Me,” but I could have it wrong. But he says, “Hugged the kite and swallowed the stamp.” I know that a kite is a letter for someone in jail. But why would he eat the stamp? And then Jada’s like, “No, he’s not really eating a stamp. It’s just more like, he’s holding a letter close to his heart.”

It’s metaphorical.

Jinx: Yeah. And I was like, “Oh.” And then he’s just sort of like, “Why the f*ck are you interviewing me?” Like, you don’t get that. But it’s hearing rap, especially some of the albums, I mean, Shea talked about, we were a lot younger. So sometimes you hear this stuff, you interpret it based on what you know about the world, and then you don’t really revisit it because you move on to new music. And hearing a lot of these albums, I’m going back and being like, Oh, there’s a joy in kind of f*cking it up. There’s a joy in not having art explained.

Shea: I remember that being a thing just before the internet came out where if you didn’t know a thing, and none of your friends knew the thing, then whoever said an answer with the most confidence you were like, “Well, I guess that’s true, that must be the written…” A rap version of that is: We were just talking about Lil Kim and there’s a part in the episode where, where we were talking about some predictions that she made in the song, she has a line about “Money ruined this money ruined that, whatever money came between us…” In the mid-’90s, there was this whole big thing that happened with the Seattle Supersonics where this guy got a contract that the star didn’t get. And the team fell apart and you’re like, “Oh sh*t, I think she’s talking about the Seattle Supersonics right now.”

…And she wasn’t. Or there was a line that Raekwon had, where I found out later around the line is, “remember, I go deep, like a Navy Seal.” But he says it in that Raekwon voice where it sounds like, “Remember I got teeth like a baby seal.” And you’re like, “What? I don’t understand, I don’t know what this means. Why is he talking about a baby seal? Why he’s talking about my teeth?” And you’re trying to figure it out because, by this point, the Wu-Tang Clan was out there and everything they did had nine different meanings and you’re trying to figure it. And you’re just digging through whatever you can dig to try to figure out, Why is he talking about baby seal teeth? It was just like a fun time to listen to rap. It’s just great to not know.

So one of my favorite things about the show is the segment Flagrant Foul, which you guys renamed about three episodes in out of nowhere because you guys love to just throw a curveball.

Shea: Brandon came up with that. That was Brandon. That was all Brandon’s idea.

Do you guys have a favorite Flagrant Foul so far? Because our favorite rappers are very flagrant.

Jinx: I’m trying to think of one that really stands out. I think Lil Kim’s honestly. She has crazy stuff. She was like drying herself with a gun.

Shea: No, that was Lil Wayne. “The gun is my towel.” A big Lil Kim foul was when she said she was getting people from the Harlem Boys Choir performing oral sex on her or something like that. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

The Flagrant Foul thing is maybe my favorite category on there. And it was one of those things where we Brandon and I, over the course of a month or two, were work-shopping ideas and said, “Oh, we got to do this, and we got to do that.” A lot of the time, we would argue back and forth about a thing or talk back and forth about a thing. But when he said, “Oh, we should do this,” There was no argument at all. It was like, “Oh, that’s exactly what we should do. Exactly how you pitched.” It was just such a good, smart, fun idea. It just made me very happy. That was, that was all Brandon right there.

I do have to say you guys bully Kerm relentlessly. I need to know the origins of this. Why is Kerm constantly the target of the bullying? What did he do to deserve this?

Jinx: Look, I just met Kerm. But the thing with Kerm is he played ball. The first time we were like, “Yo, Kerm, maybe you should sing ‘One Skip.’” [This is sung to the tune of Ray J’s “One Wish” and it’s a screamer] And he was down. And then after that, it was like, “Alright, Kerm, maybe you should sing those skips like Ray J, maybe you should sing ‘One Skip’ like Lil Wayne singing like Ray J.” And so it just gets crazier and crazier, but Kerm is starting to turn on us. He’s starting to fight back in some ways, but Kerm’s great. The stuff he does in the show really takes it to the next level. Being able to bring in musical notes, he really gets the humor of the show. There are times where we invent a category essentially for the episode. And Shea’s like, “Kerm, give us these noises, give us these noises,” and Kerm goes, and they’re better than what we’re saying. I’m like, “Kerm, gunshots.” And he comes with a real noise.

Shea: But when you get on there, I know that Brandon is going to have his sh*t done. Deena is going to have hers done. Kerm is going to have his done. I’m going to have mine done. And it just works. But that’s like a good example. With the silliness of the gunshot noises, there’s real actual work that Kerm has to do for that. He works very hard on all that stuff. We cut out when y’all were talking about the bullying thing. I don’t know if y’all settled on an answer for that.

Jinx: But the funny thing is that Kerm is building his own Kerm-hive. And then they start to turn against us. So we need to play our cards right. Because I feel like Kerm is amassing an army that’s supportive of him.

It’s what happens! It’s the Fat Amy effect.

Shea: Then I’m like, what the hell? I’m busting my butt over here. Kerm comes in for 30 seconds. And that’s all anybody wants to talk about. Kerm can go to hell. That’s the title of this article when you can post it on Uproxx. “Kerm Can Go To Hell.”

Do you think you can make the best burgers in the game? Has that smash burger style influenced you? Do you have a good bacon-to-sauce-to-cheese ratio? How are those buns looking? Buttered? Steamed? Toasted?

UPROXX’s new series, Cooking Battles, based on our viral editorial series, pits two cooks against each other to see if they have the chops to wow with their food. People’s Party’s Jasmin Leigh is on hand to judge the first showdown.

Episode one opens with food writer, influencer, and home-cook Caitlin Sakdalan (@befatbehappy) facing off against L.A. pop-up chef Ralph Degala (@ralphdegala) in the ultimate burger battle. Each chef’s burger was inspired by a drawing from a younger member of their families, meaning creative interpretation levels were running high. From there, each chef went their own way in how they put together their burger. Chef Degala focused on making a bomb-looking Filippino-inspired burger sauce with HEINZ products. Chef Sakdalan brought the heat with HEINZ mayo-toasted buns and funky blue cheese.

There was, thankfully, a lot of bacon going around in both burger kitchens.

After the chefs cooked their burgers, Jasmin Leigh stepped in to cook each burger at home — per the chef’s instructions — to see who made the best rendition. Though the taste was a core component of Leigh’s adjudication, she also judged each burger on “Presentation, Build of the Burger, Use of Sauce, Closest to the Drawing, and Creativity.” We all know a messy burger might taste great but only until it falls apart or covers you in buckets of sauce.

Watch the whole video above to see who took home the win on the very first episode of Cooking Battles on UPROXX!

Britney Spears speaking about her conservatorship in court recently drew reactions from just about everybody, from Piers Morgan to Chris Crocker from the “Leave Britney Alone” video. The topic found its way into Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show monologue last night and he found a clever way to show his support for Spears.

Colbert started by summarizing the situation. When he mentioned Spears’ father Jamie, there was a smattering of boos from a handful of audience members. He then got into Spears’ court appearance and how she said her conservators should be in jail, which lent itself to a “not that innocent” joke from Colbert.

He wrapped up the segment by using Spears song titles to make his point, flipping through single covers of the corresponding words as he said them. He said,

“I have something to say to the court: Your honor, this conservatorship over Britney Spears is ‘toxic.’ The fact that this is legal is ‘criminal.’ ‘Everytime’ I think of the ‘circus’ around her, I ‘scream and shout’ because this is ‘crazy.’ Britney’s saying, ”I wanna go’ because all these people want a ‘piece of me,” but their response is just, ‘Gimme more.’ Britney, ‘don’t cry.’ You are ‘stronger’ than these ‘womanizers’ and we are ‘lucky’ to have you. Jamie Spears, your daughter deserves to be in control of her own ‘work, b*tch.’ Anyone who doesn’t think so is ‘crazy.’ Oh, I already used that one? Well, ‘oops!… I did it again.’”

It’s a clever bit, so check it out above, starting at about 6:35 into the video.

Jay Williams became the latest Twitter user to use the “I got hacked” excuse after something weird popped up on their account. Following the news that the Boston Celtics opted to hire Brooklyn Nets assistant Ime Udoka as their next head coach, Williams celebrated Udoka for becoming the first head coach of color in franchise history.

That statement is not correct — ex: Bill Russell coached the Celtics and was the first Black head coach in NBA history, Doc Rivers was in charge right before Brad Stevens — so Williams deleted his tweet and came back with the following:

Absolutely no one believed this, and apparently, fellow ESPN basketball analyst Jalen Rose is among that list of folks. The two were on set ahead of Game 3 of Clippers-Suns and spent some time discussing Game 1 of Hawks-Bucks. Williams raised a point where he was correct about how Trae Young would cook Milwaukee’s defense if it employed drop coverage against him, but Rose, being the pro that he is, slipped an “I got hacked” in there as an excuse for being wrong.

Let this be a lesson to all of us: Do not go at Jalen Rose, because he is more than happy to bring stuff like this up on national television.

(Via The Big Lead)

Books, canon-divergent video games, and a burgeoning TV franchise: The Witcher can do it all, and Geralt of Rivia can grunt his way through every leather clad step. Ready your swords, because Andrzej Sapkowski’s highly addictive monster-universe shall be celebrated — on July 9 — during a joint event from CD Projekt Red (the developer of The Witcher video games) and Netflix (the maker of The Witcher TV show). And as this trailer shows, the loner monster hunter isn’t thrilled about it, but that’s possibly because he’s getting no bath time (which is now canon, so c’mon).

Oh, who am I kidding? Even if Geralt got his bath, he’d be sure to grunt before and after, especially if Henry Cavill’s TV take has to witness Jaskier singing, “Toss A Coin,” which is truly the biggest monster of the entire franchise. Never fear, Jaskier got some airtime in this trailer, too.

WitcherCon is set to feature appearances from Cavill, along with Freya Allan (Ciri) and Anya Chalrota (Yennifer), as well as showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich. Expect reveals about the mobile The Witcher: Monster Slayer game and Season 2 of the Netflix series. We’ll hopefully also hear more about the prequel series in development and the upcoming Netflix anime movie, Nightmare of the Wolf. Previously, Netflix’s Geeked Week announced WitcherCon with a breezy “Geralt, meet Geralt,” and this team effort should be a satisfying one for those who wish to roam the Continent.

The event will be held exclusively online on July 9 on YouTube and Twitch, and another stream will run on July 10. As of now, though, Netflix’s The Witcher doesn’t have a Season 2 release date, but let’s cross our fingers for late 2021.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Helen Mirren rules

What’s cool about Helen Mirren is that she looks and sounds almost exactly like you would imagine the Queen of England looks and sounds like if you were only loosely familiar with the monarchy, but she’s also awesome. Both of these things, which seem a little incongruous on paper, are pretty explainable. The first one, the royalty thing, is probably a combination of age and hair and posture and voice and the fact that she has literally played a queen about half a dozen times and the thing where uncultured Americans like me are susceptible to seeing all of those things and immediately becoming colonists again. It’s probably more on us than her. But still.

The other thing, the one where she’s awesome, is also explainable, although we can’t just wave it away as a result of appearance and 400 years of history. For that, we will need specific examples. Evidence, if you will, to make our case. And the good news here is that we have plenty of it because, for about five or so years now, at least, Helen Mirren has been doing some extremely cool stuff.

Start with the Fast & Furious movies. Helen Mirren — excuse me, Dame Helen Mirren, winner of an Academy Award for playing, you guessed it, the Queen, in a movie literally titled The Queen — straight-up openly campaigned to be in these movies. She more or less begged Vin Diesel through the press. And then she got her wish, landing the role of Jason Statham’s crime lord mother in the eighth movie and reprising it in the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff. Which was cool, for sure, but still not enough for Helen Mirren, because, dammit, Helen Mirren didn’t want to be in these movies as window dressing to class-up the joint. Helen Mirren wanted to drive. Fast. Possibly even furiously.

Which brings us to the ninth movie. And, specifically, to this scene, which was highlighted in the second official trailer.

Hell yes. Helen Mirren is playing Jason Statham’s street racing mother in a franchise that started with Vin Diesel stealing DVD players and now features Ludacris and Tyrese going to space on behalf of the United States government in what appears to be a homemade NoS-powered spaceship. I challenge you to find a single flaw anywhere in that sentence.

And Helen Mirren is not just an action star now, either. She’s also lending her well-earned gravitas and status to one of our silliest comedies, Documentary Now. I hope you are familiar with Documentary Now, both because it is a terrific show and because trying to explain it from a blank start is difficult. I’ll try. Documentary Now is an IFC series produced by Bill Hader and Fred Armisen in which they kind of do parodies of famous documentaries. My favorite example of these is “Juan Likes Rice and Chicken,” a season two episode that adds goofs to the general idea of Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It’s so good. It’s on Netflix. It’s 30 minutes long. Go watch it.

Anyway, Helen Mirren. The premise of the show is that Documentary Now — a fake show within the real show — is a real program that has been making real documentaries for over 50 seasons and this series is just a selection of some of the best. And to sell all of this to a degree that is just wonderful on a few levels, each one is introduced by, you guessed it, Helen Mirren in the opening moments of the episode. And she is deadly serious in these openings, as she explained to Variety.

Though the “Documentary Now!” titles and scripts are aligned with the show’s satirical tone, Mirren must pretend to be unfazed when she reads each line from the teleprompter live for the first time. She doesn’t see them beforehand — she likes to be surprised.

“You just have to put to one side that this is anything to do with comedy — this is nothing to do with comedy,” Mirren said. “This is very, very serious, and I have to think that I’m presenting an absolutely, profoundly serious documentary and treat it with that sort of respect and seriousness that I would if that was what I was presenting.”

So there’s that. Which is great. But there’s also this: Helen Mirren just started narrating a nature show on ABC called When Nature Calls With Helen Mirren. It is silly and informative and airs directly before America’s Finest Television Program, Holey Moley. That would be enough to warrant the discussion in this section about her doing awesome stuff. It gets better, though. As part of the promotional tour for the show, she appeared on The Tonight Show, and did two notable things:

• Showed a home video of her attempting to shoo off an actual black bear by shouting “naughty bear”
• Zoomed into the show from her damn bathtub

Remarkable. Look.

It’s the best. Helen Mirren is the best. It’s not always easy for actors and actresses — especially actresses — to land quality roles as they advance in age. Hollywood tends to spit people out quickly. But Helen Mirren appears to have made a decision a few years ago that she’s only doing cool stuff that seems fun and she ended up bending parts of Hollywood to her whims. I respect it so much. Helen Mirren is the greatest.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — This is either the worst or best idea I’ve ever seen

This is the trailer for a new Netflix dating show called Sexy Beasts. It is maybe, and I mean this with all the love and affection I can possibly muster, the stupidest thing I have ever seen. Please, if you have not watched it all the way through, take a moment and do that now. Witness dating show perfection. Ignore the fact that the basic premise of this has already been done, at least once, most notably by the show Love Is Blind, because Love Is Blind did not, at any point, to my knowledge, feature anything on the level of a man in a full-on beaver mask listing his priorities in a potential mate thusly:

The harsh truth here is that I doubt I will ever watch a full episode of this show. I’ve already extracted everything from it I could possibly ask for, just here, just from this teaser. Anything beyond this feels like a case of rapidly diminishing returns. But I could be wrong. Lord knows I have been wrong before. Many times. Loud and in public. This is pretty good, though. I’m happy for everyone involved. I hope a couple from this show hits it off and gets married and has a slew of kids and grandkids, and I hope to be watching when one of those kids or grandkids asks them how they met. Eavesdropping at minimum.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — It’s good to see Conan going out with a bang

Conan is the best and has been for a long time. Take a spin through YouTube and run through the highlights. Look around and see his fingerprints on the world of comedy in 2021. He’s influenced an entire generation of people who are now influencing the next generation of people. He’s the Letterman of people who were a little too young for Letterman, and he’s forging a similar career path by moving onto something else once he felt he’d done the late-night thing. His final episode on TBS aired this week and now he’s moving to a whole new thing on HBO Max. I’m excited to see what he does next.

But before he does any of that, he’s taking a much-deserved victory lap. There’s that clip up there with human charisma bomb Paul Rudd showing up in a tuxedo and pulling the same Mac and Me ruse he’s pulled dozens of times. There’s this clip of Conan smoking weed with Seth Rogen on-air and, yes, please do imagine explaining the concept of any of this to a person watching the earliest iterations of his show.

It’s all pretty great. Conan has somehow had both a triumphant and sympathetic run over the years, with high-profile successes and failures playing out extremely in public. His influence is everywhere, first as a writer on The Simpsons and SNL, then as a goofball talk show host, then as someone who hooked into his fandom and the internet to make something new. And he’s not done. I kind of hope he does it forever.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Why did it take so long for us to cast Regina King in a Western?

This is the trailer for an upcoming Netflix movie titled The Harder They Fall. It looks incredibly dope in a lot of ways, as you can tell by watching it or by reading the description and names of all the cool people in it.

When outlaw Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) discovers that his enemy Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) is being released from prison he rounds up his gang to track Rufus down and seek revenge. Those riding with him in this assured, righteously new school Western include his former love Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), his right and left hand men — hot-tempered Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi) and fast drawing Jim Beckwourth (R.J. Cyler)—and a surprising adversary-turned-ally. Rufus Buck has his own fearsome crew, including “Treacherous” Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), and they are not a group that knows how to lose.

My only complaint here, to the extent I have one, is that it took us all until 2021 to cast Regina King in a Western. What have we all been doing? Why didn’t we get on this earlier? Regina King is great in everything. She’ll obviously be great in a Western. And I say this as someone who doesn’t even like Westerns that much. Deadwood, Tombstone, I mean, it’s a short list for me. And I’m still stoked. I was stoked at “Idris Elba and Regina King in cowboy hats,” regardless of context. They could have been having lunch al fresco in cowboy hats — not even for a movie, just to chat and eat Caesar salads — and I would have been thrilled. This is even better than that.

I do have one request, though: I’m going to need her to drop at least one emmeffer in here. I’ve said this before, many times, but Regina King is one of her generation’s great cussers, especially when it comes to tossing around an MF or two. Need proof? Won’t just take me at my word? Fine, consider this: This is just a screencap of her saying it, without audio, and it’s already hundreds of percent more convincing than anything you or I could pull off in our angriest and most passionate moment.

Let Regina King cuss. In a cowboy hat. Just once. Or many times. Preferably many times. For me. Thank you.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Let’s check in with Vin Diesel on the F9 press tou-…. oh, yes

I have terrific news: The F9 press tour is still taking place. We talked about it last week when Vin Diesel discussed his plans to release an entire album of original music, but we are going to talk about it this week, too, and every week for all of time if, Lord willing, the cast and crew continue doing interviews to support it. That would be fun, if it’s like November and the movie has been out for five months and Vin Diesel is still popping up on magazine covers to give incredible quotes to lucky journalists. Quotes, for example, like the ones in this blockquote, taken from a profile in Men’s Health.

“It was a tough character to embody, the Hobbs character,” Diesel says. “My approach at the time was a lot of tough love to assist in getting that performance where it needed to be. As a producer to say, Okay, we’re going to take Dwayne Johnson, who’s associated with wrestling, and we’re going to force this cinematic world, audience members, to regard his character as someone that they don’t know—Hobbs hits you like a ton of bricks. That’s something that I’m proud of, that aesthetic. That took a lot of work. We had to get there and sometimes, at that time, I could give a lot of tough love. Not Felliniesque, but I would do anything I’d have to do in order to get performances in anything I’m producing.”

First of all, I love it. Everything about it. I love that Vin Diesel talks about these movies like they’re fine cinema. I love that he’s saying this about a character —Hobbs, the government agent played by The Rock who travels to Brazil to hunt them down — who wears what appears to be child’s medium Under Armor shirts at all times in defiance of physics or biology. I love that Vin Diesel says the word “Felliniesque” and now I need to hear him say it in his gravel-coated voice.

But please do me a favor: Close your eyes right now, maybe put on some white noise really loud so it’s just you and your thoughts, and get a clear mental image of The Rock’s face as he read those words. I’ve been doing this all week and it’s sustained me to a degree that I’ve barely needed to eat food.

And it gets better. Vin appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show this week, too. Here, look:

What we have here is Vin talking about the casting of John Cena as his secret brother, which is already an amazing collection of words. But let’s really highlight the magic here. Let’s look at these words in their printed form.

“Obviously I’m multicultural. You could’ve cast anybody to be my brother. For two months before I went into filming, I created a shrine where I could do all the combat training, all the stunts and I had the Charger there to simulate the garage to get into the Dom state of mind.”

I need, more than anything else in the world, to see this Dom Shrine, possibly as a DVD extra for F9, possibly via a guided tour by Vin himself. I need this for a bunch of reasons but, mostly, I need it because it appears to be a magical place.

“[Cena] comes into the shrine one morning, and I had this strange feeling…that Paul Walker had sent him.”

Perfect. It’s a perfect movie franchise. None of you can take this away from me. I’m so happy I might float off into the clouds in a homemade NoS-powered spaceship.

ITEM NUMBER SIX — Your periodic reminder to watch everything with the captions on

Luca was a fun and sweet movie with a nice message. These bastards at Pixar made me get all misty again. Their batting average is almost too good with that, like in a way that’s bordering on suspicious. Like they’ve unlocked a cheat code somehow. Or they’re using subliminal messages. Either that or I am just an emotional basketcase with these kinds of movies, which can’t be true because I am a big strong man.

But that’s not really the point. The point is that, at multiple moments in the film, a caption like this would pop up on the screen and delight me to no end. Always watch movies and television shows with the captions on. There’s gold in there if you dig a little. I love to exclaim in Italian.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Bill:

I just wanted to thank you for recommending Mythic Quest. It’s become the show my wife and I watch together on Friday nights to unwind after the week. It’s a great strategy most weeks, except for this week when the show left me emotionally spent and on the verge of tears in the final scene where Poppy sings to Ian. There should be a warning for that stuff like there is for violence and language. I need to prepare myself, man!

This email is all true, from beginning to end. I too got a little choked up at the end. Although, to be fair, they did shoot an arrow straight into my soul with the song selection…

If you can watch someone sing “Rainbow Connection” to a scared friend in a hospital bed without feeling things, you need to evaluate huge parts of your life. That sucker got me really good. This makes two sections in this week’s column where I’ve discussed sweet shows or movies that made me cry in the last week. And in two others, I discussed the Fast & Furious franchise. This is, more or less, everything I am about boiled down to a sticky and concentrated paste. I feel okay about it.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To California!

As Touchstone Pistachio Company ran through its routine audit earlier this month, something wasn’t adding up.

More than 42,000 pounds of pistachios had vanished.

21 TON NUT HEIST???

The company soon enlisted the sheriff’s office in Tulare County, Calif., for help and on Saturday, law enforcement officials said they had found the missing nuts and arrested the thief. Police said Alberto Montemayor, 34, was hiding the pistachios in a tractor trailer parked in a nearby parking lot and then repackaging them to sell.

21 TON NUT HEIST!

The case is just the latest heist of pistachio nuts in Central California, where the nuts were a $5.2 billion economic engine tied to more than 47,000 jobs last year, according to studies commissioned by the industry. Last August, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office arrested a 23-year-old man and accused him of stealing two trucks full of pistachios valued at $294,000.

STRING OF NUT HEISTS!

Heists skyrocketed between 2014 and 2017, resulting in the loss of more than $7.6 million worth of nuts, according to CargoNet, a company that tracks truck thefts. But during the past few years, thefts have declined as the farm industry has become savvy to the schemes and larger growers have adopted new policies, such as taking photos and thumbprints from drivers, according to Capital Press.

So, three things here:

• It is deeply, deeply hilarious to me that there have been so many nut heists that truck drivers are out here using fingerprint scanners like they’re carrying top-level military technology
• It’s fun to imagine a world where the first Fast & Furious movie was about them stealing many tons of pistachios instead of DVD players
• I cannot get over how satisfying it was to type NUT HEIST in all-caps like that

I need to see a movie about a nut heist task force and I need it to star Regina King in a cowboy hat. I do not think this is an unreasonable ask. I will show up on set and give notes if it will help.