Category: Worldwide

The New York Jets fell to 0-12 on the season on Sunday with a 31-28 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders that should have been their first win of the season.

New York led 28-24 late in the fourth quarter and actually got a defensive stop inside the 10 on a 4th and 3 with just over 90 seconds to play that, with one first down, would’ve allowed them to put the game on ice. However, the Raiders were able to get a three and out and force a punt with just over 30 seconds to play, but still needed to march all the way down the field for a touchdown, being that they trailed by four. What ensued was one of the wildest defensive playcalls we’ve seen all year, with notoriously aggressive defensive coordinator Gregg Williams blitzing eight and leaving poor DB Lamar Jackson in one-on-one coverage with speedy rookie Henry Ruggs III, who dusted him and hauled in a perfect deep ball from Derek Carr to give Vegas the win.

The Jets, who, to be clear, have been a disaster on both sides of the ball this season, likely were well served at a franchise level by the loss as it kept them a game ahead of the Jacksonville Jaguars for the first overall pick and, as such, their choice of any of the top quarterbacks, headlined by Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence. Still, it was a gutting loss for those on the team who are desperately trying to avoid becoming the second winless team in recent history. Williams knows a little something about going 0-16, as he was the new DC in Cleveland in 2017 for their winless season, but he will not have the opportunity to put a second complete winless season on his resume as the Jets made the decision on Monday to let him go after his…interesting play call that assisted in costing New York the game.

It was not just couch coaches that had questions for Williams’ decision-making after the game, as Jets safety Marcus Maye was even confused by the call in the postgame media availability.

As for what’s next for Williams, one has to wonder if this will be his last stop as a defensive coordinator. He was once highly regarded around the league, but will forever have the Saints bounty scandal on his resume as well as some disastrous seasons with Cleveland and New York — although it should be noted his last year in Cleveland was a solid one. The NFL loves to recycle coaches and give them chance after chance, but Williams’ time as a coordinator may be done — although you can never put it past an NFL team to decide he’s worth handing the keys over to once again.

Obsessed hosts Britt Ellis and Taylour Chanel are back to curate a must-watch streaming guide that will keep you more than busy this holiday season, honing in on the inspired storytelling and boundary-breaking casting of some of the hottest entertainment picks coming to a small screen near you.

First up is Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton, a Victorian-era drama filled with intrigue, romance, and scandal. Rhimes and company are bringing some much-needed diversity to the historical setting and we’re here for it and what it might mean for representation in Hollywood.

Another interesting, risk-taking series coming early next year is Marvel’s WandaVision, which drops on Disney+ in January. A superhero show with a few seeming nods to vintage sitcoms a la I Love Lucy, it looks all kinds of weird in the best way and both Ellis and Chanel think the show could push the comic book universe forward by letting fans spend more time with some of their favorite characters.

And we can’t talk about Marvel without honoring the late Chadwick Boseman who tragically passed earlier this year. The Black Panther star became a real-life hero for so many, and fans can catch his final performance in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, coming later this month. The film, which is already garnering considerable awards buzz, stars Viola Davis as the legendary Blues singer and Boseman as a frustrated young Jazz musician whose ambition disrupts a fateful recording session. Ellis and Chanel reflect on Boseman’s legacy of bringing multi-faceted Black men to the big screen and the impact of his final turn.

Check out the video above for all of their must-see picks.

Drake is recovering after having surgery on his knee. The Canadian star posted an update on his physical therapy to Instagram, informing fans that he’s taken “some confident steps at 5 weeks.” While he never revealed the issue that led to his knee in a brace, some fans speculated that it was a torn ACL — the same injury that caused him to collapse at a show in 2009. As to how he was injured, the prevailing theory is that NBA star Stephen Curry’s dangerous handles had something to do with it — a hypothesis Curry coyly danced around when asked.

The injury was a setback in a year that saw Drake reestablish his pop-culture dominance without even putting out a proper album. Early in the year, he teamed up with his What A Time To Be Alive co-creator Future once again in the comedic “Life Is Good” video, then held TikTok hostage with his song “Toosie Slide” ahead of releasing the odds-and-ends mixtape Dark Lane Demo Tapes.

He then took a break from the limelight to finish up his album, which he began rolling out with the surprise video for “Laugh Now, Cry Later” with Lil Durk. Teaming up with Nike for a collection of merch celebrating his upcoming album, Certified Lover Boy, Drake seemed primed for a huge end to the year. However, despite winning his rec league championship, his plans were seemingly derailed by his injury, while he postponed his album’s release to 2021. Still, with his new Nike sub-label on the way, he’ll likely remain at the forefront of the public’s attention as he regains his mobility and we all wait to see what else he’s got up his sleeve.

Remember at the beginning of this year when the big story in sports was what was going to happen in the fallout of the Houston Astros cheating scandal? It was a simpler time when people could be outraged by the prospects of a team stealing signs and signaling them to batters in the box by way of banging on trash cans — with some wild conspiracy theories that branched out from that, such as shock signals being sent to players wearing sensors on their bodies.

None of Houston’s players ended up being suspended for their actions, but manager A.J. Hinch was fired and suspended for a season and the organization faced some penalties and fines. The revenge tour other teams would go on against Houston was once considered the story of the baseball season, but being 2020 that quickly shifted to the sport trying to navigate the pandemic and, while it became something of a storyline in the postseason, it mostly fizzled away.

Still, the folks at Family Guy apparently aren’t so easily discouraged from making a joke that might be old news, as this week they took aim at the Astros in a brief non-sequitur involving a TV investigative segment on the cheating scandal that joked the culprit was simply Oscar the Grouch being on the team.

This probably would’ve landed much better back in February or something, but you have to get your jokes off when you can and your new episodes are airing, so here we are. Astros fans are surely tired of the jokes — and in some ways I think even a lot of baseball fans have moved on — but it’s never going to fully go away and this is further evidence of that.

Last week, Hugh Grant blurted out that he’s starring in a new mockumentary about the year 2020 from the creators of Black Mirror, and now, we’ve got some more details about the mysterious project including a star-studded teaser. Or at least the names of stars anyway.

Appropriately titled Death to 2020, the comedy special will be coming in hot as the teaser reveals that project is still in production, which jibes with Grant’s revelation that he only just started filming the mockumentary. But whenever Death to 2020 arrives to satirize the absolute nightmare of a year, it will be boasting one hell of a stacked cast including Samuel L. Jackson, Leslie Jones, and more. Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:

2020: A year so [insert adjective of choice here], even the creators of Black Mirror couldn’t make it up… but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a little something to add. Death to 2020 is a comedy event that tells the story of the dreadful year that was — and perhaps still is? This landmark documentary-style special weaves together some of the world’s most (fictitious) renowned voices with real-life archival footage spanning the past 12 months.

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, Lisa Kudrow, Kumail Nanjiani, Tracey Ullman, Samson Kayo, Leslie Jones, Diane Morgan, Cristin Milioti, Joe Keery and more, Death to 2020 is the cathartic comedy event you’ll never forget about the year you really, really don’t want to remember.

While not much is known about who the other stars will be playing, Grant did give away his role when he accidentally revealed the project. “I am a historian who’s being interviewed about the year,” he said. “I’m pretty repellent, actually! And you’ll like my wig.”

(Via Netflix)

It has been a historic year for international music on the Billboard charts. This summer, BTS’ “Dynamite” became the first song by an all-South Korean group to top the Hot 100. Now, Bad Bunny has further broadened Billboard‘s horizons with his latest achievement: His new album, El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo, has debuted on top the Billboard 200 chart dated December 12 and has therefore become the first all-Spanish chart-topper in Billboard 200 history.

This new accomplishment has also broken another chart record that Bunny himself previously set not that long ago: El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo topped YHLQMDLG, which debuted and peaked at No. 2, to become the highest-charting all-Spanish album ever. Bunny’s two aforementioned albums are also two of only four all-Spanish records to ever top the Billboard 200, following Mana’s Amar Es Combatir (which hit No. 4 in 2006) and Shakira’s Fijación Oral: Vol. 1 (which also reached No. 4, in 2005).

It’s unsurprising to see Bad Bunny pop off like this, considering he was the most-streamed artist on Spotify globally in 2020. All this comes after a bit of a health scare for Bad Bunny, who tested positive for COVID-19 recently. The good news, though, is that he seems to be doing fine now, as he told James Corden, “I feel great, thank God. I already tested negative, so I’m so happy. I feel great. I feel perfect.”

As the United States began to acclimate to potential life in lockdown after the start of March, Wayne Coyne joked that he’d long shown the world exactly how to self-isolate and entertain at once. For years, the pied piper of The Flaming Lips’ fabled onstage extravaganzas had crowd-surfed in a clear plastic bubble, careening above a few thousand of the momentarily happiest people on the planet. “I’ve been prepared for a while,” Coyne captioned a photo of himself, riding a wave of countless outstretched hands against reassuringly blue skies.

“We thought quarantine was going to last a month,” Coyne admits eight months later on an afternoon in late mid-November, sitting in his 15-year-old Toyota Prius in the driveway of his Oklahoma home. “We thought this was just a moment in time, and we’d all be back to doing what we do.”

As the weeks turned into months, it became clear to Coyne that this wasn’t the time for quips — life, and especially Flaming Lips shows, wouldn’t be returning to normal for the foreseeable future. The Lips stayed home in Oklahoma City. They scrapped concert sprees. They delayed the June release of American Head, arguably their most best album in nearly two decades, until September, when its bittersweet reflections on aging out of wonder and the occasional sadness of strange trips felt timely.

But the joke slowly began morphing into surreality, as often happens for The Flaming Lips. They performed “Race For The Prize” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in June, the audience and the band alike clad in bubbles just like Coyne. He wore latex gloves and appeared strangely triumphant, his wife, Katy, and their toddler, Bloom, bound by bubbles and dancing in the front row. More television performances followed, as did a video for dreamy American Head standout “Assassins Of Youth.” Watching the Lips deliver a battle cry for reclaiming innocence from the grip of power and peril amid a pandemic was a balm, a galvanizing reminder of art’s ability to lift us over the shifting obstacles and exigencies of existence.

On January 22 and 23, more than ten months after Coyne’s Instagram tease, The Flaming Lips and their fans will indeed step into the bubbles for two full performances in Oklahoma City, both of which sold out nearly as soon as they went on sale. But it likely won’t be the end of this experiment for some of music’s most beloved pop tinkerers. “There have been a lot of details to figure out, and what if this thing ends in a couple of weeks?” Coyne says. “But if it keeps going, we keep going.”

We talked to Coyne, a new father and new husband, about what he’s learned from staying at home in 2020 — and how he’ll feel about pressing forward when the time comes.

What’s the best thing that’s happened to you in 2020?

In the very beginning of the pandemic, there was the fear that people were just going to be dying in the streets. We included ourselves in that. But after the first couple of weeks, that subsided. It didn’t feel like you were going to walk out in your front yard and find dead people. So we got used to not traveling and not having obligations. We’ve been lucky that we’ve been able to stay home. The Flaming Lips have been successful enough to be pretty busy since 2002. We’ve never really had a minute to do too much other than play shows and make records. It would be different to stay home if the rest of the world was still going 1,000 miles an hour, if everybody else was playing and making lots of money.

Katy, my wife, and I both just say “Yes” to everything, even though we don’t really want to — an art opening, a band, a birthday party, drinks, all at the same time. We always feel like we’re lucky to be invited, but by the time most weeks end, previous to this, we’re wishing someone canceled, because we’re doing too many things. I never like to say we were having a good time during the pandemic, because families are struggling and people are dying. But on that one level — we can’t go anywhere, and there’s nothing to do even if we wanted — we’ve never had that. You don’t realize you’re missing that element of time.

You spend so much of your life traveling. Has it been restorative to have that space and time as a family, especially with a newborn?

We would be doing everything together, anyway, like traveling to Australia with our little baby. We’re one of those families you’d see living up in the mountains, just throwing the baby on the back and climbing across the glacier.

What have you realized you don’t miss from life on the road right now?

You get used to there being no routine — waking up in a different hotel in a different city, going to a different airport. There’s a lot of time spent just getting somewhere. You’re on an airplane. You’re trying to get to a hotel. It’s fun and exciting, but you’re spending a lot of energy just getting from place to place. We had conditioned ourselves to be always on the move.

It took us a little while to remember that we can’t just go get on a plane and fly to Hawaii if we want. But once we got used to it, it was a relief not to even have that choice. We don’t realize the torture in choices. That is one of the dilemmas of modern life: If you’re not living in poverty, there’s a lot of choices. When you make a choice, part of you is glad, but part of you regrets it. You still want to know what’s out there. Most of us have found a joy now in never having to decide. It’s a little adjustment to get used to there not being anything to do — just cooking at home, watching TV. You don’t realize how valuable that kind of routine is.

What’s something you’ve learned to cook during quarantine?

Actually, Katy is a pretty good cook. We didn’t really do that much cooking out before, but we have a big grill. We do that three or four nights a week now — fish, sometimes steak. We haven’t really gone to any restaurants. If you had told me that back in March, I’d be like, “You’re crazy! How can you live without restaurants?” We’ve gotten all that time back, too. How much time do you spend finding a parking spot? Going in, waiting for food, paying? It’s a lot of time where you’re doing nothing. I don’t know if I want to go back to using my energy for that.

It sounds like you’ve found some new fulfillment in being more concerned with necessities rather than luxuries. Lots of us have, right?

Being concerned about the same things that everyone in the world is concerned about, that’s something that really hasn’t happened in my life. I’ll be 60 in January; suddenly, the whole planet is worried about the same things at the same time. That’s really cool.

Even in the past couple of weeks, there’s been the coronavirus. And we had an ice storm where, in the entire city, all the electricity was out for a little over a week. For the first couple days, it was frustrating, but again, you kind of get used to it. When the power came on, we didn’t quite know what to do. And within all that, there was the election. I remember going to bed a couple nights when I had to get gas for the generators while worried about the election and the virus. I was just very tired at 10 p.m., and I said, “This is really one of the great luxuries of life — that you are completely working and occupied until you are exhausted, and then you go to sleep.”


It’s like you’re reverting back to life as a cave dweller.

A farmer, maybe. It requires a lot of work, maintenance, care, energy, and time. You really are what you get used to.

Are you worried at all about overcoming this newly comfortable inertia when, say, the time comes to get back on the road?

No, because everyone wants to play music and make money. We’re glad to have the great jobs that we have and fans. We’d always be jumping at opportunities — not thousands of opportunities, but enough to keep you doing plenty.

You mentioned finding solidarity in shared anxiety. Given that feeling, were you ever worried that putting out a record would feel like an unwelcome distraction, that you’d be asking people to pay too much attention to you and not, like staying alive?

I like the word you used, solidarity. That is a good way to put it. The record of ours came out in the beginning of September. It was first scheduled to come out in June. March came along, and we were very relieved that we weren’t promoting a record: “Pay attention to us, and not your dying family!” We’d see other artists having an agenda, like, “Hey, my song came out!” Hey, we don’t care. We were glad not to be in that quagmire. But after a couple of months, it didn’t seem that weird. We were very glad that Netflix was still on, that we still had cable and internet. Once we got past watching headline news 24/7, we were glad to be entertained. You already know what the news is — you don’t have to watch it all of the time.

Was there the sense, by September, that people could “use” American Head? There’s a sense of bittersweet longing and a little redemption to it. Did you hope that might come in handy?

We put out quite a few songs before the record came out. We did get a sense that people were embracing them, that it felt good to listen. Steven Drozd and I are the main songwriters, and we’re worriers, anyway. We’re always worried about stuff. That’s just part of being a sensitive weirdo. That’s in our music, whether there’s a pandemic or Trump. When the whole world is a little bit more worried, we’re not so isolated. I feel like sometimes the rest of the world is partying and doesn’t give a fuck, and I feel like our music is sensitive and sad. In these times, I feel like people want something that is true and warm and speaking about real things and real life. That’s the greatest thing that music can do. Music is you. It is reflecting you.

The Flaming Lips are a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Matthew McConaughey isn’t exactly known for being a celebrity who leaps into political discussions, so it was pretty unusual to see him talk about the 2020 election results and “liberal hypocrisy” with actor/comedian Russell Brand. While stopping by Brand’s”Under the Skin” podcast, McConaughey joined his host in slamming Hollywood’s treatment of Trump voters, particularly those who are still clinging to hope that the president’s “Elite Strike Force” lead team led by Rudy Giuliani will flip the election results away from Joe Biden.

“There are a lot on that illiberal left that absolutely condescend, patronize, and are arrogant towards the other 50 percent,” McConaughey opined after Brand said that he doesn’t like hearing “offhanded” remarks about how Trump or Brexit voters are “dumb.” McConaughey then chastised his liberal friends who refused to believe that Trump won in 2016, but are mocking Trump voters for doing the same. Via Page Six:

“I’m sure you saw it in our industry when Trump was voted in four years ago, they were in denial that was real. Some of them were in absolute denial,” McConaughey said. He suggested that it would now be hypocritical for them to expect Trump voters to give up on challenging President-elect Joe Biden’s win.

“[Now] it looks like Biden’s our guy. Now you’ve got the right that’s in denial, ’cause their side has fake news. And I understand, they’ve been fed fake news. No one knows what the hell to believe, right? So they’re putting down their last bastion of defense.”

In a move that’s sure to go over well on social media, McConaughey ended his remarks by calling for his Hollywood friends to meet in the middle. “Let’s get aggressively centric. I dare you,” he said.

(Via Russell Brand on YouTube)

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw Rico Nasty’s long-awaited debut, new tunes from Lil Baby, Mariah Carey return to her Christmas wave. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

Rico Nasty — Nightmare Vacation

In Rico Nasty’s new Uproxx digital cover story, she told us of working on her new album with Kenny Beats and 100 Gecs’ Dylan Brady, saying, “Because Dylan and I are both so weird and sh*t, we don’t criticize each other. We just work out like that and try to fix it. But I can be in a booth with Kenny and he’s like, ‘Nah, bruh, you can do this better.’ So we could go back and forth, low-key arguing. Both of them are totally different, but I probably wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t have such amazing people in the studio letting me do what I want to do and then also giving me constructive criticism.”

Aminé — Limbo (Deluxe)

Deluxe editions of albums have become a new beast in 2020, and Aminé is the latest rapper to hop on that train. Instead of dropping it right after Limbo‘s release, though, he waited a few months and put out what is essentially an album of new material.

Lil Baby — “On Me” and “Errbody”

Lil Baby just capped off a tremendous 2020 (as tremendous as anybody’s 2020 can be, anyway) by celebrating his 26th birthday. He marked the occasion by dropping a pair of new songs, “On Me” and “Errybody,” the videos for both songs equipping the rapper with Fast And Furious levels of transportation options and intensities.

Juice WRLD and Benny Blanco — “Real Sh*t”

Speaking of birthdays, Juice WRLD would have celebrated his 22nd a few days ago, and Benny Blanco observed the day by dropping “Real Sh*t,” a song they worked on together before Juice’s death. In a message accompanying the release, he revealed the song was the first one they ever recorded together and noted, “It was the first time I saw his magic.”

Mariah Carey — “Oh Santa” Feat. Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson

There’s no way Mariah Carey was going to let a Christmas pass without putting her stamp on it. This year, she dropped a new holiday special and the Ariana Grande-featuring single “Oh Santa,” which proved to be perfect meme material for Grande.

100 Gecs — “Sympathy 4 The Grinch”

On the opposite end of the Christmas music spectrum sits 100 Gecs, who introduced a characteristically warped new brand of holiday music with “Sympathy 4 The Grinch.” Like the character referenced in the title, they too have a bone to pick with Santa and the season of which he is emblematic, so they plan a nasty surprise for the jolly one.

24kGoldn — “Coco” Feat. DaBaby

24kGoldn has been one of the year’s biggest rising stars and has a No. 1 single on “Mood” to prove it. Now he has linked up with another young hip-hop stud in DaBaby for “Coco,” on which the pair try to get inside a romantic interest’s head and figure out what it is they’re looking for.

Run The Jewels — “The Ground Below (Royal Jewels Mix)” Feat. Royal Blood

El-P and Killer Mike make the most of the guests they get to work with them, and they’ve done so again on the “Royal Jewels” remix of “The Ground Below.” They got UK duo Royal Blood to put a hard rock edge on the track, and RTJ’s in-your-face style works beautifully against a backdrop of aggressive guitar and punishing drum work.

Drakeo The Ruler — We Know The Truth

This summer, Drakeo The Ruler dropped a truly one-of-a-kind album with Thank You For Using GTL, for which he recorded his vocals over a prison phone system. Now that the rapper is out from behind bars, he has returned with his first post-prison album, which impressively was released less than a month after he was free.

Death Cab For Cutie — The Georgia EP

If you’re just hearing about this one now, you’re too late. The Georgia EP was only available on Bandcamp for 24 hours last week, and it saw Death Cab cover a handful of songs by Georgia-based artists (like the project that Jason Isbell has promised), including R.E.M., TLC, Cat Power, and a couple others.

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

Bob Dylan’s library of music could go up against anybody’s. Under his belt, he has legendary singles like “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and “Like A Rolling Stone” and albums like Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde. Even his latest album, this year’s Rough And Rowdy Ways, has received overwhelmingly positive critical reception. Now, all of that music has a new owner, as Bob Dylan has sold the publishing rights of his song catalog to Universal Music Publishing Group (UMG) in a huge new deal.

The sale includes over 600 copyrights that span about 60 years, with features material ranging from 1962’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” to this year’s “Murder Most Foul.” Variety reports that while the terms of the deal were not disclosed, a source told the publication the deal “was easily in nine figures,” which isn’t a huge leap to make considering 80 percent of Stevie Nicks’ catalog sold for about $100 million within the past week. Variety speculates the Dylan deal “probably drew a number well above that.” For additional context, Taylor Swift’s Big Machine master recordings sold recently for $300 million.

UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge said in a statement, “As someone who began his career in music publishing, it is with enormous pride that today we welcome Bob Dylan to the UMG family. It’s no secret that the art of songwriting is the fundamental key to all great music, nor is it a secret that Bob is one of the very greatest practitioners of that art. Brilliant and moving, inspiring and beautiful, insightful and provocative, his songs are timeless — whether they were written more than half a century ago or yesterday. It is no exaggeration to say that his vast body of work has captured the love and admiration of billions of people all around the world. I have no doubt that decades, even centuries from now, the words and music of Bob Dylan will continue to be sung and played — and cherished — everywhere.”

Aside from Grainge, Dylan has also received praise recently from Paul McCartney, Barack Obama, and Uproxx’s Steven Hyden; See where Rough And Rowdy Ways ranks on Hyden’s list of favorite 2020 albums here.