Category: Worldwide

Conservative culture critics are continuing to try to make an example of Cardi B, even though they really should have learned their lesson by now. The latest is former Congressional candidate and podcast host DeAnna Lorraine, who decided to make an odd comparison while watching the Republican National Convention last night.

“America needs far more women like Melania Trump and far less like Cardi B,” Lorraine opined, parroting pundits like California Congressional candidate James P. Bradley and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who seem to be really, really invested in Cardi’s new song, “WAP” — after discovering it “accidentally,” of course.

Cardi, who never lets these sorts of insults slide for too long, batted back with a succinct reminder that the gap between herself and the former model is actually pretty slim. “Didn’t she used to sell that Wap?” Cardi questioned. While that’s perhaps an exaggeration — all evidence suggests that Mrs. Trump was only ever a nude model before dating Donald Trump in 2000 and marrying him in 2004 — Cardi’s next tweet made the comparison less of a contrast and more of a parallel. “This pic giving me ‘Yeah, you f*ckin wit some wet ass pussy’ vibes,” she wrote, sharing a photo from one of Melania’s aforementioned nude photoshoots.

Of course, the more she’s harangued by Republicans hoping to use her as an avatar of America’s moral decay, the more attention and success “WAP” receives. It just spent its second week at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and spawned a theme-appropriate merch line selling T-shirts, sweats, raincoats, and umbrellas emblazoned with the song’s title. Maybe taking down Cardi is like “draining the swamp” — you know, saying one thing while totally doing the opposite.

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

Netflix’s The Witcher (which proved to be better than it had any right to be) is rolling film again on Season 2. Yes, really, and Henry Cavill recently posted an unflattering photo of himself as proof, and the good news is that a ton of fresh The Witcher content will eventually arrive. Given the success of the video games, books, and the show’s first season, Netflix has officially turned it into a franchise; so, we’ll see a live-action prequel series called The Witcher: Blood Origin and an animated, feature length movie called Nightmare of the Wolf. Before those happen, fans can also get a satisfying dose of Geralt of Rivia with an upcoming 32-minute special called Making The Witcher.

Above, Netflix has dropped a trailer for the special, which promises “the secrets behind the saga.” Front and center, the video dives into the climactic first-episode fight scene between Geralt and Renfri (Emma Appleton). As one might imagine, their flawless swashbuckling did not come effortlessly, and Cavill even ditches the Geralt wig to concentrate on nailing his moves. It was worth it, and as Cavill reveals in this video, the exhilarating scene that only lasted two minutes involved a full ten days of training. (And that’s after he basically held a sword in his hand for months on end, just to get used to the feel.)

Naturally, the special should show us how Lauren Schmidt Hissrich wove three separate storylines — those of Geralt, Yennifer, and Yiri — together. The first season didn’t do so in a completely seamless manner, but the second season won’t be jumping around as much (especially since Geralt and Yiri finally crossed paths in the season finale), which should be a relief to anyone who grew slightly confused while watching.

Making The Witcher is streaming on Netflix now.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Kelly Lee Owens is days away from releasing her second album, Inner Song, which comes after “the hardest three years of [her] life,” as she describes it. The journey may not have been easy, but she emerged out the other side grateful.

Owens sits in London on one end of a phone interview, fresh off an online Inner Song listening party. It was the first time anybody outside of her inner circle heard the record, and she’s just getting used to her latest batch of creativity being out there.

“It’s still weird, but I’m coming to terms with people hearing it now,” Owens tells Uproxx. “Last night was an amazing reaction, and every time someone says that they love it, I kind of get this tingling and it feels really good.”

That’s the same reaction her fans (and the ones she is bound to earn in the coming weeks) ought to have when they finally get to hear Inner Song this week. Her 2017 self-titled debut album put her on the map in the electronic music world, and Inner Song is her living up to the massive potential that project showed. The album soars, thumps, relaxes, excites, and otherwise makes the three-year wait worthwhile by expertly capturing a variety of moods and aesthetics.

“A variety of moods” adequately describes the new standard of life in 2020 and how Owens has experienced it. “I’m kind of riding that roller coaster of life, up and down, and just being compassionate with myself, and also counting a lot of my blessings,” she says. “I think all of us have had things stripped away, and just understanding what’s important — family, friends, good food, health, and nature — I think all of that’s interconnected.”

Owens seemed to be on one of those aforementioned ups during our chat, as her smile could be heard over the phone as she discussed Inner Song and some of what went into it, how virtual gigs compare to the real thing, and what her next new endeavor may be.

How did you approach making this new album differently than your first one, especially considering that your first album did well and perhaps set a high bar for you for this one?

It’s always that dreaded second album thing that people talk about, right? I’ve seen a lot of my friends go through that, and I was determined to not bow down to that pressure, because it can really mess you up and it can really inhibit what it is that’s needed to come through and be said. So, for me personally, I was kind of lucky that the first album rippled and kept rippling for almost three full years.

I kept getting asked to do things like tour with Jon Hopkins and DJ. I just kept saying yes, and that meant that I couldn’t create as much as I would’ve liked to. I was really ready to create when the time came, and it was last February that the album was recorded. The music, the instrumentals, were recorded within 35 days, which is kind of crazy. I think that’s when the floodgates kind of opened. I was with a guy called James Greenwood and he just encouraged me to let the ideas flow and have them be fully formed, saying, “Don’t do what you normally do, Kelly,” which is trying to EQ the kick drums before you move on the synth melody. “Let’s maybe scope the sound, deal with nudges later, and just allow the ideas to be fully formed and honor the ideas in that way first.”

I can see it being very easy to fall into a trap where, in your mind, you say, “Well, this kick drum or whatever is in front of me now, so let’s just get it perfect now.”

That’s the perfectionist within me, and I think most people who make music are perfectionists in some sense. I also enjoy the detail, but it’s okay if the detail comes at the end, which is also a part of honoring the idea fully. I think James is not interested in that at all, but I could spend hours on automation and the nudges and making sure things flow into one another. I really, really enjoy that, but it was also amazing to feel a bit more like a conduit for the ideas this time, to actually be fully present. It was almost like it worked so well that, honestly, it was a bit of a blur, how it happened. I know I worked hard, and I know it was exhausting in a satisfying way, but a lot of the details, it’s odd: I can’t remember it. It truly was a whirlwind.

Speaking to being in the weeds of the album, you had a tweet recently that said, “Thunder contains some of the most magnificent bass frequencies.” To me, that reads as a tweet from somebody who loves samples and finding odd things to put in their music, like all the ice samples that you had in “Melt.” Were there any unusual samples beyond that that found their way onto the new album?

There’s a couple. In ‘On,’ towards the end, in the end section, there’s a really high-definition recording of a train pulling into a station. It’s just a delight for the ears. I think I kind of started the track with that and used that BPM for the track, and then set it around that, then built up the percussion, and then the melodies on the synth, and then took it away again, and then I was like, “Oh yeah, I better add that back in.” It’s just like a puzzle of triggering ideas and that’s really what samples are about for me.

Are there any songs on the album that have taken any new meaning in light of all that’s going on? I know you said most of the album was written pre-March when all this started happening worldwide.

What I really enjoy in my personal life is, I like to think of myself as spiritual and I like to tap in. There’s a song called “Wake Up” and that was kind of a commentary on swipe culture and tech and where we’re at with that stuff, and how that’s affected us and our connection to the natural world. So, the line, “Never pausing to take it in or was avoiding your sense of dread.” You know, it’s not a judgment, it’s a commentary on — looking at myself, even — waking up every day swiping. That’s why I said, “Wake up, repeat again.” So we were all, as we’re in this dreamlike state, when we’re so vulnerable to ideas and information, we wake up and we look at Instagram or whatever, and we’re taking in all this stuff and I just don’t think that’s so good for us.

I was looking at that and then I was looking at the theme of nature versus technology. One thing that was revealed to me sonically was, I realized that the strings are like Earth, and Earth asking us to listen and connect and really be honest about what’s happening. This stuff reveals itself to me. I think that relates back to me allowing myself to be some kind of conduit for this record.

There’s a feature on the album from John Cale, which is a nice get. I’m sure it’s pretty exciting for you, especially with your background in indie and you both being from Wales. What did you learn working with a legend like that?

I think what John inspires in me is, he’s nearly 80, I think. I don’t want to push on the years in case I’m wrong. [Editor’s note: John Cale is 78 years old.] He’s just as wild and free in his creativity as possible. He’s not being like, “Oh, I’m going to be 80, I need to conform and remain relevant and popular.” He’s always been true to himself and his creative ideas and his creative integrity. I think that really inspires me about him, and I saw that when he delivered what he delivered to me, and also just the fact that he was genuinely a storyteller. That’s why I asked him in the first place. So it was just so beautiful to receive what I received from him. Then he graciously allowed me to rearrange it and he loved the arrangement.

In recent years, you’ve also managed to work with, as you said, Jon Hopkins, and you’ve also remixed St. Vincent and Björk. Are there any other greats on your list who you’d love to work with?

It’s funny you say that, because basically… Thom Yorke. [laughs] Maybe “Arpeggi” is my way of being like, “Hi.” [Editor’s note: Inner Song opens with a cover of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.”] I just love Radiohead, especially In Rainbows. I mean, they’ve made so many great records, but for me, that one is a pure desert island disc, if I have to take ten albums to listen to forever. I think sonically, we’re kind of interested in similar things, but it’s kind of like with Jon Hopkins, I knew before I met him that if we were to ever collaborate, it would be something that was kind of quite epic and that would flow.

One of your recent posts on Instagram that I saw was a very bare-bones recording set-up. It was basically just a microphone, headphones, and an older MacBook Pro. Do you prefer a more stripped-down recording environment, and what can you get from that kind of setup that you can’t from a larger sort of studio space?

What you saw on Instagram is where I write and record all of my vocal ideas. For this album and the first album, I have all my notebooks, and then I get this one big note pad and I pull in all my ideas for what I need to say or what the songs need me to say. People are like, “Is that Logic 9?” And I’m like, “Yeah, dude, it is.” Everything’s old, but it still works. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? I’m very much like that.

If it does a job, it does the job. I think with each album, it’s important to introduce something new, perhaps, and that could be like… this time it was a plugin. So yeah, I think keeping it simple is great.

You did a DJ set on Minecraft earlier this year. As livestream things become more common, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on them. How does the feeling of doing something like that compare to doing an actual gig at an in-person venue?

I don’t think it can ever really compare, but there was a feeling that I got from that Minecraft thing and in the chat room last night when I did this album listening party, and everyone turned on their screens and I could see them bouncing in their bedrooms or living rooms. I still felt a sense of community and togetherness and interconnectedness, which is really all it’s about. But there’s nothing like the palpable energy [of a venue]. You can’t beat it, I think. But I do think that whatever base we need to connect in the meantime is good. I don’t think it’s a battle, one or the other: I think both can coexist. I think it’s important for things to be safe and feel good.

I see these DJs, who I won’t name, playing DJ sets with people and, yes, they got masks on, but they’re really squished together. I just wouldn’t personally feel comfortable about doing that right now. I wouldn’t want to get anyone sick and be responsible for that. But for me, I think it’s really about physical connection. I now understand that it’s the privilege of a lifetime to be able to play in a room full of people and for everyone to connect in that way. I think those moments genuinely change life.

You tweeted not long ago, “Big Brother theme tune is still absolutely banging.” I’ve actually never been a regular viewer of that show. So, your tweet made me go and find that song, and you’re right: It absolutely rips. Is making music for a movie or a show something you would like to do?

It’s funny you say that because actually, this time has allowed me to work with my publishing company to be able to explore that more. I had done some writing recently for a TV drama series, and it’s not like officially happening. Also, my music is being trailerized at the moment. They’re taking the music and doing things that I would never be so bold to do, but that’s kind of emboldening me.

I’m actually going to spend the next couple of months — September, October — kind of writing for films in that way and really exploring that kind of dramatic side to my sonics and my personality, I guess. So yeah, film is something I’ve always been interested in writing for, and I think it’s all about conveying emotion, right? Which is kind of all it’s about for me anyway. I think it’s an amazing thing that could be really interesting to do. Watch this space, I guess.

Inner Song is out 8/28 via Smalltown Supersound. Pre-order it here.

Tim And Eric star Tim Heidecker has proven his musical chops beyond the silly songs from his show. He has released some more serious music and has more on the way with his upcoming album, Fear Of Death. He previewed the project earlier this month with the title track, on which Weyes Blood contributes piano and vocals. The pair worked together on more than one track, as she co-wrote and sings with Heidecker on his latest single, “Nothing.”

Like the rest of Fear Of Death, the song addresses dying, with lyrics like, “Nothing: That’s what it amounts to, they say / A black void waitin’ down the road for us one day / But It’s alright don’t listen to me / I could be wrong let’s wait and see / But if you see me in heaven just let me be.”

Heidecker previously spoke about how grateful he was to have collaborators like Weyes Blood work on the project, saying, “This record is a dream come true for me. I got to work with some of the best, and nicest, musicians in town who helped me take some shabby, simple tunes and turn them into something I’m really proud of.”

He also said of the album’s dark themes, “I didn’t know that this record was going to be so focused on death when I was writing it. It took a minute for me to stand back and look at what I was talking about to realize that, yes, I am now a middle-aged man and my subconscious is screaming at me: ‘You are getting old, dude! You are not going to live forever! Put down that cheeseburger!’”

Listen to “Nothing” above.

Fear Of Death is out 9/25 via Spacebomb. Pre-order it here.

In recent months, NPR has shifted the format of its storied Tiny Desk series, instead tasking artists with giving intimate performances from their homes or other spaces that aren’t the NPR office. They got Billie Eilish (joined by her brother Finneas) to participate in their latest performance, and it sure does look like they are in the usual Tiny Desk performance space.

It turns out, though, that the two actually just set up a replica of the space that looks convincing on camera. Between songs, Eilish explained, “So obviously, we are not actually at Tiny Desk, because this is a cardboard cutout of it. But it’s still real, it’s just not in-person real.” The final shot of the performance reveals their setup, which consists of a desk in front of the giant photos of the NPR office’s Tin Desk area, held up on two big wooden frames.

The performance consisted of two songs. Eilish sang and played keyboard on “My Future” as Finneas sat behind her, playing backing guitar and sometimes chiming in with complementary vocals. The two switched places for “Everything I Wanted,” as Finneas took over the keyboard while Eilish sat behind him and sang.

Watch the full performance above.

OnlyFans, known by many as the “paywall of porn,” is a subscription-based service where creators can share videos and photos directly with fans. It was already plenty popular before Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” remix featuring Beyoncé (“Hips TikTok when I dance / On that Demon Time, she might start an OnlyFans”), but the website saw “a 15 percent spike in traffic” after the song was released, and its notoriety has continued to grow. Cardi B launched an account and Bella Thorne, from Assassination Nation, The Babysitter, and HBO’s Big Love, recently joined, too. She even set an OnlyFans record.

Variety reports that Thorne “officially earned over $1 million through revenue on the platform in the first 24 hours after debuting her account,” a new record. “Thorne announced her plans to launch on OnlyFans in a video montage posted to Instagram on Aug. 19. Since then her earnings from OnlyFans has jumped to about $2 million. Thorne is using OnlyFans to share personal content and never-before-seen photos and videos — available only to paying subscribers.” A one-month subscription costs $16.

Thorne’s successful OnlyFans debut has been a topic of conversation on Twitter. “I hope huge celebrities creating an OnlyFans and making huge profits inspires America to decriminalize sex work. Bella Thorne is making millions within hrs while sex workers are dying each day due to the illegality of their profession. Change it,” @thoughtfulbae tweeted, while @ynkkist added, “So y’all praise Bella Thorne for making millions of OnlyFans but when sex workers use the platform they get shamed and berated for it?”

If you subscribe to Thorne’s account and/or you believe in the decriminalization of sex work, be sure to also check out Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA, a network “dedicated to the fundamental human rights of people involved in the sex trade and their communities, focusing on ending violence and stigma through education and advocacy.”

(Via Variety)

Netflix’s Ozark will start production this fall on a super-sized fourth season to end the show, and it’ll be wild to see how they follow up on that bloody third-season cliffhanger. Jason Bateman recently revealed that he made the tough decision to break tradition and not direct the season’s first two episodes, so that filming could go off with a few hitches as possible. The family’s messes will all be fully laundered, finally, and hopefully, there will be plenty of Marty Byrde losing his sh*t, and yep, there’s already a scripted ending.

Even though Bateman isn’t involved in writing the show, he is, as one might expect, aware of how the show ends and whether Marty and Linda Byrde get away with all of their ill-gotten gains. As he told IndieWire, he’s tried not to press showrunner Chris Mundy too hard on specifics, but he needed to know whether real consequences were afoot: “Specifically, what kind of happens at the end of the last episode: I know, and it’s great.”

Yes, vague. I like to think that, even though Marty’s done some bad things, he and the fam will somehow still end up in Aruba, soaking up the sun and… enjoying wearing colors other than blue? I kid on that last detail, but Bateman did drop some hints on why the show favors that desaturated color palette. He apparently started experimenting while directing Bad Words and The Family Fang and decided that “flatly lit, and with all wide lenses, super-saturated colors” didn’t need to be a rule for comedies, and he simply kept that ball rolling when he started work on Ozark.

Previously, Ozark Director of Photography Ben Kutchins confirmed to Decider that Bateman was definitely part of creating “a distinct look” for the series, and that comes through in “the way that we color correct the episodes,” among other factors that provide for a unique feel. They certainly succeeded, though it’d really be something if they started throwing pops of orange around. Or at least do that when Ruth enters the final season for the first time because (let’s face it) she’s gonna rule the world someday.

(Via IndieWire & Decider)

Martin Shkreli, the current federal prison inmate infamous for jacking up the price of antiparasitic drug Daraprim, unexpectedly became a part of one of the most peculiar music stories of 2015 and beyond. He bought a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album from the group for $2 million, a sale the group later regretted. It was quite the tale that spanned years, and now it looks like it’s being made into a movie by Wu-Tang member RZA.

Collider reports that RZA is set to executive produce One Upon A Time In Shaolin (alongside Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company), and that it will be released on Netflix. The film will be directed by Paul Downs Colaizzo, director of the 2019 movie Brittany Runs A Marathon. The publication notes that the script “follows the auction for Wu-Tang Clan’s seventh studio album and its aftermath.”

After buying the album, Shkreli attempted to sell it on eBay. At that point, RZA says he tried to get the album back: “I’ve actually tried to get it back, but the paperwork and the contract stops me from getting it back. When [Shkreli] put it on eBay, the first thing I did was call my lawyer, and I was like, ‘Yo, let’s go.’ And they said, ‘All right, check with your contract.’ And it’s, ‘No, you can’t do it.’ Ain’t that a b*tch?”

It’s official that Kate McKinnon is playing eclectic animal activist Carole Baskin in a series based on Netflix’s Tiger King, the defining pop culture artifact of the quarantine-era (only half-joking!), and the real-life Cameo star has some thoughts.

“[Kate] has not reached out to me and I really hope that she does before she gets too far down the line with it. I’d love to know what her take is on it and what she’s thinking to do and see if there was any way we could advise her,” Baskin said on The Pet Show podcast co-hosted by Jimmy Jellinek and Dennis Quaid (not the cat Dennis Quaid, but the human Dennis Quaid). She then got into what she doesn’t want to see on the series:

“We reached out to her through the media — because I don’t have any way of contacting Kate McKinnon — but we had posted publicly that we really hope that her or anybody that does any kind of follow-up programming doesn’t end up doing what Cardi B did and hiring people that are exploiting and abusing cats. It’s like the worst thing you can do is abuse cats to show other people that you shouldn’t abuse cats.”

Cardi B and Baskin engaged in an unlikely feud over the use of tigers in the rapper’s “WAP” music video with Megan Thee Stallion. “You have to pose a wildcat in front of a green screen to get that image and that doesn’t happen in the wild… That tells me they probably dealt with one of the big cat pimps, probably even one of the ones shown in [Tiger King], who make a living from beating, shocking, and starving cats to make them stand on cue in front of a green screen in a studio. That’s never good for the cat,” Baskin said. Cardi’s response: “Like, girl you killed your goddamn husband.”

In the podcast interview, Baskin also joked (?) that she “could just slap” Chloe Fineman for her impression of her on SNL (Colin Jost can relate). “This whole, ‘My kitty, meow, meow, kitty, meow,’ and then she would just say these really weird words all in a row. That all became popular, I guess, in popular culture and people wanted me to talk like that on the Cameos… I have no idea how to talk like that. That is not how I speak.”

“That all became popular, I guess, in popular culture” is also how I’m going to describe Tiger King to my grandkids in 50 years.

(Via EW)

The legal situation surrounding Britney Spears has proven to be complicated over the years, and now another wrinkle as been revealed. The Los Angeles Times notes that a court filing from last week reveals that Spears’ sister, actress Jamie Lynn Spears, is the trustee of her estate, and that she’s now seeking more authority over it.

Britney established the trust — named the “SJB Revocable Trust” and described by the LA Times as a “multimillion-dollar estate” — in 2004 to make sure her children’s future would be protected in the event of her death. A 2018 amendment said that upon Britney’s death, Jamie Lynn, who signed the document in Hammond, Louisiana last week, would administer the assets to Britney’s children. In a court filing from last week, Jamie Lynn requested that the assets of the trust be transferred to one or more accounts with Fidelity Brokerage Services, with her as the custodian of the account(s). If this request is approved, Britney’s financial assets would be placed in the account(s) and removing them would require the approval of a judge.

According to The Blast, the filing notes that upon Britney’ death, Jamie Lynn will ensure the money gets to Britney’s children: “Upon the settlor’s death, the entire principal of the Trust, including all accused and undistributed and unrealized income, together with any insurance on the settlor’s life or other assets payable to the Trust as a result of settlor’s death, shall be promptly distributed by the Trustee to the trustee or co-trustee of the BJS Kids & Family Trust, to be held, administered and distributed in accordance with its terms.”

The LA Times notes the filing doesn’t indicate what role this could have in Spears’ ongoing conservatorship situation.