Category: Worldwide

It has been three years since fans have had new material from Lorde, but finally, she has made her surprise return. That’s right: @onionringsworldwide, Lorde’s once-secret onion ring review Instagram account, is back.

One of the most fun pop stories of 2017 was the realization that Lorde was running an Instagram account on which she reviewed different onion rings she has eaten. After the account went public, Lorde took it down, explaining to Jimmy Fallon at the time, “Now everyone knows about it and it’ll feel like something I’m doing to crave fame, then people are gonna be throwing onion rings at me on tour and it was gonna turn into a whole thing. It was fun for like five seconds, but I’m still going to keep eating onion rings.”

Lorde’s last post on the account was on June 12, 2017, but over the weekend, she made her first new post in 3.5 years, sharing a photo of an onion ring and writing, “Don’t call it a crumb back…” She reviewed a few onion rings in subsequent posts and revealed in one of them that the first run of her account affected her relationship with the food. She wrote, “I’ve got to be honest with you, this reviewer stopped ordering onion rings after her identity was leaked to the press in the great debacle of 2017. I’d get a smile and a wink from waitstaff– it got embarrassing, you know? But it occurred to me that some things are too good to let the internet spoil.”

Check out Lorde’s new onion ring reviews above and below.

Tobe Nwigwe‘s #cincoriginals and #gettwistedsundays campaign continue with the video for the new single “A Million.” As usual, his wife Fat guest stars in the video, but this time, their adorable babies get to make cameos as well. The monochromatic color scheme of this video returns to the pale mint green of previous entries in the campaign after a few eye-popping departures and Tobe once again raps and sings solo after inviting some amazing guests along in the most recent weeks. On the back half of the video, archival footage showcases Tobe’s rise to fame and the highlights of his stellar 2020, from rapping with Sway to performing on NPR Tiny Desk.

On “A Million,” Tobe celebrates a milestone, singing “I got my first million and it was straight out the mud.” While the focuses on contrasting his prior conditions to his current ones (“I lost some friends while I was broke / But now I got a million”), the second verse sees his remaining true to his character and supporting his people with his newfound seven-figure status (“I brought the whole hood through the door / And now I got a million”).

After breaking out with the viral video for “Try Jesus,” Tobe drew national attention and began working with some of the most noted names in the game. On “Bozos,” he linked with Big KRIT, then he traded verses with two of today’s pound-for-pound best technical rappers Black Thought and Royce Da 5’9″ on “Father Figure.” He and “D Smoke took “Headshots” at haters on their collab, then Houston hometown hero Lil Keke gave his blessing to his potential successor on “Purple Rain Thing.”

Watch “A Million” above.

The “white child raised by natives” narrative has been a staple of the movie Western probably for as long as the movie Western has existed. John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) stands out as the most prominent example. Perhaps the only theme rivaling it for cinematic pervasiveness is the “gruff widower looking for redemption.” That’s who Tom Hanks plays in News of the World, a new film from director Paul Greengrass opening in theaters December 25th (with a Netflix release TBD), an attempt to give us all the iconic Americana of The Searchers with none of the problematic themes or un-PC language.

Like John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, Tom Hanks’s Jefferson Kyle Kidd is a Civil War veteran from the Confederate side, now traversing an occupied Texas beset by banditry, where embittered, impoverished ex-soldiers often prey on the hardscrabble populace, who in turn resent the twitchy Union soldiers they call “the blues” charged with enforcing the peace — all in the midst of an ongoing war between settlers and Native tribes. Unlike Wayne’s Edwards, Kidd seems to have accepted his lot as one of the vanquished, dutifully carrying around his written loyalty oath to the Union and arming himself with only a “scattergun,” a shotgun filled with birdshot.

The only new twist on the genre here is Kidd’s job, which, as referenced in the title, involves him traveling from town to town getting paid a dime a head to read newspapers to the townspeople. A dime seems a little steep; according to CCR, a Willy & the Poor Boys concert down on the corner only cost a nickel to tap your feet. Anyway, Kidd flatters his audience, saying they’re probably too busy working to stay abreast of world events (“Hey, we get it, you can read, you just don’t want to!”) before regaling them with news of mine collapses, railroad company mergers, and the latest proclamations from President Grant, who the crowd inevitably boos and hoots at like a pro wrestling heel.

One day whilst clompety-clomping down the proverbial dusty trail, Captain Kidd (his parents must’ve loved pirates) comes upon an overturned wagon and a freedman hanging from a tree, presumably lynched by restive ex-Rebs. Amidst the wreckage of the wagon he finds a scared little girl, blonde and blue-eyed with conspicuously fake freckles. Seriously, I would read an entire oral history about the decision to give this already-blonde-and-blue-eyed young girl painted-on Mexican sitcom freckles. Were they worried she wouldn’t read white enough? Nonetheless, despite her obvious caucasity, the girl is clad in buckskins and understands no English. She speaks only subtitled Kiowa.

No one else is around, so it seems Kidd is stuck with her. She’s his responsibility, and no one is buying his reluctance about it. His quest is to get her to someone who can take care of her, which will be no mean feat considering she’s already been kidnapped from her white family by Kiowa, torn from her adopted Kiowa family by soldiers, and shorn of her black guardian by some proto-Klansman. Orphan me once, shame on you…

Again, there isn’t much new to the age-old orphaned settler story, though I suppose News Of The World (adapted from the 2016 novel by Paulette Jiles) deserves some credit for covering all the bases of cross-racial kidnapping. Hanks is watchable as always, playing Kidd as an amalgam of Rooster Cogburn, Jimmy Stewart, and Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, your classic American hero who doesn’t start a fight but is willing to finish one, who stands up for the little guy but doesn’t want to make a big thing out of it. He has compelling chemistry with the girl, played by 12-year-old Helena Zengel, the rare competent and tolerable child actor (probably on account of she’s German, and thus didn’t come through the Disney Channel influencer-building machine), who lovably eats chili with her bare hands and tries to start songs during dinner, as she’s been raised.

From there, News Of The World plays out like an obstacle course, with a fleshed out premise and an obvious ending, where most of the narrative energy expended is in contriving barriers to put between the finished setup and expected resolution. Hanks and Zengel weather them all gamely — bandit attacks, dust storms, learning to use a spoon — but Greengrass (director of United 93, Captain Phillips, and the last three Bourne movies) never quite pulls off the sleight of hand necessary to make us momentarily believe in a different outcome. Thus even his most thrilling contrivances still seem slightly tedious and his ending never feels like “the prestige.”

Since almost everything else in it is a tried-and-true trope, the obvious question becomes, why the news-reading angle? At one point, Kidd and the girl get Shanghai’d by an evil ascotted warlord, who tries to force Kidd to read his propaganda rag about what a great job creator he is to the presumably coerced multicultural workforce at the warlord’s buffalo poaching ring (“Jefferson Beauregard Bezos,” I believe the warlord’s name was). Kidd instead regales them with tales of working-class solidarity and nearly starts a revolution (can I get a “hell yeah?”).

The buffalo camp scene is News Of The World‘s most interesting interlude and its clearest hint at a theme, but unfortunately it’s also probably its least well-executed sequence, and thematically, something of a one-off. I would’ve loved to watch Tom Hanks go from town to town inciting labor revolutions with his freckle-faced sidekick, but News Of The World clearly didn’t want to be that movie.

Instead it comes off more like a neoliberal hall of horrors, where the white hero (a reformed Confederate who has seen the error of his ways) triumphs over racists, white nationalists, human traffickers, nature, income inequality, and environmental degradation (the last two as represented by the buffalo camp). Which he does so by reading legacy media to ignorant rural peoples with the assistance of offscreen brown people (okay I exaggerate, the Kiowa did show up once to give him a horse). Grrr, democracy dies in darkness!

Like neoliberalism itself, News Of The World is better than many alternatives, but ultimately disappointing in its lacks for any unifying message, or at least any beyond “don’t be like them.” “Be decent” would’ve been a worthy cause, and perfect for the uncommonly decent Tom Hanks, but News Of The World is a little scattershot and brings with it an implied smugness. America’s Dad literally reads the newspaper to ignorant townsfolk. “But isn’t this fake news?” they ask.

To which he assures them, “No, son, this news is all very real.”

Ah, well, glad we cleared that up.

‘News Of The World’ is in theaters on Christmas Day. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

This essay appears as part of the 2020 Uproxx Music Critics Poll.

The year is 2023. You’re at a festival, any festival. Just pick one. The one you missed the most in 2020. Let’s say this festival is called Nardwuar’s Doot Doola Doot Doo (Doot Doo!) Festival sponsored by Bang Energy, which doesn’t presently exist but goddamn that’s a good idea and someone should definitely pay me for it. The 2023 headliners are Megan Thee Stallion, Haim, Blink-182 with Tom DeLonge (a one-night-only reunion), a post-Jesus and post-Trump Kanye, Rico Nasty, 100 Gecs, Post Malone backed by Fleet Foxes, and the master of modern mosh himself, Lil Uzi Vert.

With Uzi next up on the mainstage, you made the random but ultimately well-timed decision twenty minutes earlier to accept a stranger’s invitation for a few licks of molly off their surely shared finger, washing it down with gulps of crisp Bang. The stage lights drop, and you hear the intro to “Baby Pluto” cascading over the crowd.

Welcome to Eternal Atake…

Suddenly, you think back to the first time you heard Eternal Atake and are struck with a deep existential pang. As the molly kicks in, you ascend with Bang wings and turn to your friend, trading the icky/hickey/sticky/picky/busy lines from the song while embracing the anonymity of this burgeoning mosh pit.

Sure, this meticulously imagined scenario still feels eons away from being a possibility. But that’s a key part of a mid-pandemic spin of Eternal Atake.

The album, after being relentlessly teased with admirable-in-hindsight calculation since 2018, finally worked its way into our collective bloodstream on March 6. Within days, any hope of ascending with a crowd of thousands as soon as Uzi dropped “Baby Pluto” were dashed, though we all clung to a blind optimism that had us believing ascension was merely paused. “We’ll ascend later in the summer,” we thought. As masks became commonplace among fellow brain-possessors, and as a failed steak salesman sewed a sinewy promotional campaign in support of hoax-ifying it all, we shifted again. “We’ll surely ascend in the fall,” we told each other.

Had to get ready for war…

Yet here we are in December, still on pause.

In retrospect, it’s fitting that a key inspiration point for both the aesthetic and conceptual aspect of the Eternal Atake experience was a religious cult — Heaven’s Gate — built on the idea that one could graduate from “the Human Evolutionary Level” through death to achieve entry on a space vessel they believed was following Comet Hale-Bopp.

At this stage in the extended Eternal Atake rollout, we were under the impression that the album cover — as seen above — would draw heavily from logos and statements from the Heaven’s Gate canon. At one point, Uzi had changed his Instagram profile picture to a photo of the cult’s co-founder Marshall Applewhite.

Surviving Heaven’s Gate members, as you may recall, even went as far as to publicly condemn Uzi’s 2018 references to the group in an emailed statement to Genius.

“[Uzi] us using and adapting our copyrights and trademarks without our permission and the infringement will be taken up with our attorneys,” a rep said at the time. “This is not fair use or parody, it is a direct and clear infringement.”

By the time the album arrived, the cover had changed. Gone were the more direct Heaven’s Gate nods, yes, but in their place stood the striking depiction of a welcome daydream inside which we could later thrive.

Because as pandemic weeks turned to pandemic months, and as many of us came to the realization that we may very well not see our friends and families for the rest of the year, losing ourselves in thoughts of what might await us beyond this planet felt pretty f*cking good.

Push me to the edge
All my friends are dead

The Eternal Atake journey drops the curtain (save for bonus tracks “Futsal Shuffle 2020” and the Backstreet Boys-flipping “That Way”) with the deceptively grounding “P2,” a sequel to his flagship 2017 single, “XO TOUR Llif3.” The still-ubiquitous megahit took on the kind of life of its own that’s impossible for an artist to outrun, even if they wanted to, and cemented Uzi among the most defining creators of a generation. But instead of ignoring his biggest song, and one of the most popular songs in recent memory, Uzi chose to face its legacy head-on.

As “XO TOUR Llif3” and “P2” producer TM88 explained to me when asked for the sequel’s origin story, Uzi simply wanted to give fans an update on where he was at in his life while using a familiar palette as a jumping-off point. This cathartic do-over, he said, had a certain magic to it.

“I wanted to do whatever Uzi wanted to come up with,” TM88, who has a new project on the horizon with Pi’erre Bourne, said. “He wanted to do a continuation of ‘XO TOUR Llif3’ with more details to show where he’s at now. [The process] was just talking to him on and off throughout last year. He called me up and was like ‘Let’s do it’ and we stayed on the phone for hours just working on the record and then we magically came up with ‘P2.’”

The album, as Uzi himself confirmed shortly after its release, is intentionally divided into three six-song chapters. The first chapter sees Uzi’s Baby Pluto character in full force, while the subsequent Renzi chapter balances that let’s-leave-Earth energy with more introspection. “Bust Me” notably ends with Uzi tapping on what’s believed to be an escape button of some sort.

“You are now leaving EA, the Dark World,” a voice informs both Uzi and the listener. After “Prices,” the final six-song chapter gives us a slew of decidedly 2016-nodding entries, including this segment’s centerpiece “P2.”

Lyrically, “P2” sees Uzi in a similarly reflective space as “XO TOUR Llif3,” albeit with the newfound benefit of passed time. “I don’t wanna get older,” Uzi sings. “I’m still livin’ in my last year.”

After spending 10 months on pause with Eternal Atake in high rotation, we’re all living in the last year, thinking back — sometimes with anger, more often than not with intravenous sadness — to the private promises we made to ourselves about how 2020 would be different. Better, even. It remains to be seen if 2021 or even 2022 can feasibly house all our respective do-overs, but — for now, at least — this writer has a feeling in his stomach that feels remarkably like, dare I say it, measured hope. (Either that or I’ve had too much wine).

At any rate, think back, if you can, to that theoretical 2023 edition of Nardwuar’s Doot Doola Doot Doo (Doot Doo!) Festival sponsored by Bang Energy. As Uzi finishes his set with a Lil Uzi Vert Vs. The World throwback in the form of “Money Longer,” the stage goes dark.

While pondering additional finger-in-mouth sessions prior to Uzi’s inevitable encore, a spaceship not unlike the one featured on the Eternal Atake cover makes a rough landing nearby, at which point an extraterrestrial being emerges with a message. After explaining that their craft had previously circled the festival earlier that night to catch the blink-182 reunion set, the being invites the audience to join them on their journey home.

“A fresh start,” the being says. “Light years away from this heap of pain,” the being promises. But for the first time in years, you aren’t tempted. “I’ll stay,” you tell yourself.

After all, Uzi still has to play “Silly Watch.”

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Geraldo Rivera is still bringing it, days after he “dumped” his first snow-bound rant upon GOP “knuckleheads” who are still rooting for Trump as president, even though he lost the election. The electoral college sealed that deal last week, and Trump’s failing legal maneuvers continue to be unbelievably ridiculous and deluded. So, it’s looking increasingly likely that Trump could be dragged out of the White House on January 20, and Geraldo has had enough of the game. Geraldo was one of the first Fox News personalities to acknowledge Joe Biden (on-air) as the president-elect, and he cannot stomach how members of his party are still hanging onto an exploding train.

With that in mind, Geraldo’s got absolutely nothing to lose here with another snowy rant that aims to convince a few more Republicans put an end to Trump’s dangerous attempted coup. To that end, he’s calling out the “lunatic fringe” that’s tweeting with a #CrossTheRubicon hashtag (referencing Julius Caesar fatefully crossing a river with his army) to beg Trump to essentially start a civil war. And Geraldo’s not having it.

“Are you sh*tting me?,” Rivera bluntly tweeted. “Time to stop playing around with the Constitution. Biden won. Trump lost. Stop acting like spoiled brats. Or worse, the lunatic fringe. Enough. Basta.” And he’s got another snowy speech, too.

In the video, Geraldo calls out the Texas GOP for their foot-shooting support of Trump with one of his (failed) Supreme Court bids to overturn the election. However, he’s even more alarmed by Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward’s appeal to Trump to “Cross the Rubicon,” which Geraldo dismisses as a “crude reference,” and he appears to suggest that these fringe Trump supporters cannot possibly appreciate the gravity of what they are rooting for. “This is absolutely lunatic fringe stuff,” Geraldo proclaimed.

Granted, Geraldo’s no longer afraid of offending Trump, who already won’t take his calls anymore after Geraldo adopted the (true) position that Trump lost the election. And Geraldo unloaded upon MAGA diehard Charlie Kirk on Fox News after Kirk wouldn’t accept Joe Biden sealing the Electoral College in victory. Man, if you’d have told me back in the Capone Vault days that Geraldo Rivera would stand as a voice of reason, I’d have laughed. But here we are. 2020, you’re a beast.

After taking some time off to mourn the death of his late friend and labelmate King Von, Lil Durk returned last night with the release of a surprising music video for his new song “Backdoor.” Featuring the usual trademarks of his videos — jewelry, cars, and Durk’s crew — “Backdoor” sees Durk copping even more chunky necklaces for his collection, including one resembling Von’s signature O’Block chain. Durk also gets lined up by his barber, who helps keep him looking fresh as he smokes a cigar in the studio.

“Backdoor” may be Durk’s first solo single since releasing “The Voice” in September, but 2020 has turned out to be the Chicago rapper’s busiest year yet. While he’s always been something of a local celebrity, he received national exposure on a whole new level when Drake recruited him to contribute a verse to his buzzing single “Laugh Now, Cry Later” this summer.

Durk also expanded his range with verses alongside rising stars Bia (on “Same Hands“) and Queen Naija (on “Lie To Me“), further solidifying the growth of his brand. He also worked with some of the other biggest rappers to drop this year on collabs with Gunna on “Gucci Gucci,” and Lil Baby and local rising star Polo G on “3 Headed Goat.” His album, The Voice, is supposedly still in the works and on track for a 2020 release. A leaked version suggested it’s at least close to being finished but may also prompt Durk to wait for the new year to official drop.

Watch Lil Durk’s “Backdoor” video above.

For one reason or another, it seems the Recording Academy is always facing some sort of criticism, especially over the past few Grammy years. The motivating factor behind the hate for the 2021 ceremony was the snubs in the nominations, most notably those of The Weeknd. Artists have spoken out against the Academy and the awards this year, and now so too has Lil Wayne, who revealed that he wasn’t invited to the 2021 ceremony.

Taking to Twitter over the weekend, he openly wondered why he wasn’t invited to this year’s ceremony and why he didn’t receive any nominations (although art director Kyle Goen’s work on Wayne’s album Funeral is up for Best Recording Package), writing, “As an artist, when I see da Grammys coming up & I’m not involved nor invited; I wonder. Is it me , my musik, or just another technicality? I look around w respect & wonder competitively am I not worthy?! Then I look around & see 5 Grammys looking bak at me & I go to the studio.”

The flow of criticism directed at the Grammys has been fairly consistent since the 2021 nominees were announced a month ago. Most recently, Fiona Apple expressed her dismay at Dr. Luke earning nominations this year and suggested she might smash a Grammy on stage if she wins one.

After a recording was published of Tom Cruise tearing into Mission: Impossible 7 crew members for not following COVID rules, the actor has been praised by pandemic-weary people, who were happy to hear someone saying what they’ve been thinking, and with a whole lot of F-bombs. However, not everyone is quick to laud Cruise as a public health hero.

In a lengthy open letter, Leah Remini has accused Cruise of staging the whole thing for publicity. Her reasoning? As a former, high-ranking member of the Church of Scientology, Remini has been inside the belly of a beast, including having close contact with Cruise, and she’s seen this before. Via The Underground Bunker:

Tom does not care about the families of his crew; this is all for publicity. Tom does not believe in family values. I mean, how anyone is falling for this is just mindblowing. I would bet that Tom had this rant written for him and had his Scientology assistant record and release it. Hearing a rich actor with enormous power address his crew in this way is a sign of weakness and a deeply troubled person. This is not just a rant of another asshole actor. Tom Cruise pretending that he cares is why a few have called him out. They know this is a publicity stunt, they know what Tom really is and what Tom really believes.

Remini finds Cruise’s rant especially disingenuous because Scientology leader David Miscaviage has stated in internal documents that the pandemic is a hoax. On top of that, the church preaches that illness is a result of being in contact with a suppressive person, and therefore, they don’t subscribe to germ theory.

“When you are sick in Scientology, you are sent to the Ethics Department. You are in fact in trouble for being sick,” Remini writes. “If you have anything from a cold to cancer in Scientology it means you must be connected to an SP. You are immediately interrogated to see if you have read or seen anything that exposes Scientology, you are interrogated to see if you are connected to anyone or anything that is anti-Scientology.”

Remini wraps up her letter by saying this stunt is just more proof of Cruise’s allegedly abusive behavior, which she’s witnessed several times before, including a rant over chocolate chip cookies. “So, my short answer to how I feel about yet another one of Tom’s psychotic rants being exposed? I am getting ‘small dick energy’ from Tom and men like him.”

(Via The Underground Bunker)

The NBA season is set to begin this week, and for Russell Westbrook it’s a second straight season trying to get acclimated to a new team. For the second consecutive offseason Westbrook was dealt in a star guard swap, first for Chris Paul and most recently for John Wall, landing him with the Wizards where he’s reunited with former coach Scott Brooks.

Westbrook’s offseason filled with a trade request and subsequent move to the nation’s capital may have been hectic, but he seems happy in Washington and, off the court, he continues to push forward as one of the NBA’s most prominent figures in the fashion space. Westbrook has his own clothing line to go along with his sneaker and apparel deal with Jordan Brand, which is set to launch his “Why Not” Zer0.4, the fourth edition of his signature sneaker line with the brand.

As part of the sneaker’s release, Jordan also announced a collaboration with Japanese fashion brand FACETASM for both a colorway that will be among the first to release and an apparel collection.

The biggest performance update to the Zer0.4 is the inclusion of a “double-stacked Zoom air bag” in the midsole to provide added cushioning, and appears to be more of a low top than a mid. The line will release on January 14, 2021, with more information to come on pricing.

Music fans have been looking forward to Peter Jackson’s documentary The Beatles: Get Back since it was announced in early 2019. The film was originally expected to be released by now, but those plans had to be changed in light of the pandemic and the current release date is set for August 27, 2021. Ahead of then, Jackson has offered fans a treat, as he has shared a five-minute video featuring previously unseen footage.

In his introduction of the footage, Jackson was careful to note that the video isn’t a trailer or even an excerpt from the film, but instead a brief compilation of some footage from the 56 hours of source material (which was originally shot for the 1970 film Let It Be) the movie is based on. The video starts with a clip of the band having a jam based on a newspaper headline about George Harrison facing assault charges, then transitions into a clip of Paul McCartney and John Lennon singing “Two Of Us” through clenched teeth. That’s the vibe of the rest of the clips, which show the band having fun together while making music.

Jackson introduced the footage from his editing room and offered a progress report on how the film is coming along, saying, “This film was due to be finished around about now, but like the rest of the world, it’s been affected by the COVID pandemic. The only good thing, really, is that we’re editing the movie in New Zealand. Now that our country has largely stamped out the virus, we are able to come back in the editing room and carry on with the editing that we’re doing. […] I would say we’re about halfway through the edit now.”

Watch the video above.