Category: Worldwide

A bulk of Rihanna’s professional attention in recent years has been devoted to her various Fenty products, and now she’s getting ready to launch some new ones. Over the weekend, the multi-hyphenate announced the arrival of Fenty Skin, a new line of skincare products. She made the announcement with a bang, too: She shared a promotional video for the line, and alongside Rihanna and a handful of models, also featured are ASAP Rocky and Lil Nas X.

Rihanna revealed some info about Fenty Skin on Twitter, writing in a pair of tweets, “I’ve been working on @fentyskin for over 2 years, perfecting formulas and creating packaging that is kind to our planet!! Formulas that work, and work well with makeup!!! Everything starts with the foundation that is your skin and we all know how obsessed I am with beautiful, healthy skin- so whether you want to wear makeup, or no makeup at all, there’s always glowing skin underneath.” She later shared a photo of herself and Rocky and added, “that’s right baby…@fentyskin is for my fellas too! No matter who you are, you deserve to have great skin! More product details soon come.”

Fenty Skin is set to be released on July 31, and more information can be found on the Fenty website.

Rituals are power. In a game like basketball where the only thing controllable is the finite space of a body, and even then the forces exerted onto it can make haywire or render redundant the hundreds of hours of careful conditioning, the protections of repetition and rituals allow an extended mental safeguard — even the comfort in the myth of them — against the unknown.

So much of what is captivating about sports are the unexplainable variables — the streaks and slumps, baseball’s hyper-specific universe of superstitions, basketball players catching the hot hand right until they couldn’t hit water if they fell out of a boat. It’s why ritual and sports are soulmates, albeit exhausted ones.

The infinite potential for athletic ceremonials, like rituals, are described in the Sociology of North American Sport, by D. Stanley Eitzen and George H. Sage, as “standardized actions directed toward entreating or controlling the supernatural powers in regard to some particular situation.” When it comes to volume and specifics, “there is an almost infinite variety of rituals practiced in sport, since all athletes are free to ritualize any activity they consider important for successful performance.”

It has been proven that belief in good luck, activated through rituals around routine — talismans such as clothing and charms, verbal cues in the protective quiet of a pre-game team huddle — all increase performance. This is mainly because these rituals activate, in a sense, personal luck. In a research paper published by Lysann Damisch, Barbara Stoberock, and Thomas Mussweiler of the University of Cologne for the Psychological Science, ‘Keep Your Fingers Crossed!: How Superstition Improves Performance,’ it was found that “good luck is related to concepts associated with self-efficacy, such as optimism, hope, and confidence.” This sense of activated luck before a “specific performance task,” like a game, “leads to heightened feelings of self-efficacy toward this task, which in turn leads to better performance.”

Michael Jordan wearing his UNC shorts under his uniform, LeBron James’s chalk toss, Rajon Rondo’s five showers on game day, and the compulsion by nearly every player to bounce the ball before a free throw are all practices intent on channeling luck in order to attract or control a favorable outcome. In the wider world, pre-Orlando, time and space could be dedicated to rituals that required them. Specific meals prepared just so, a haircut on game day, even the actions individual players take in the hours padding either side of a game will have to take a hiatus or adapt to life in the bubble. Aside from stirring up luck and feelings of self-actualization, these rituals also help players guard against anxiety, stress, and nerves.

A player who has formalized ritual by making it explicitly visual is P.J. Tucker, who has elevated tunnel dressing into a fashion week runway, to the point of putting one’s psyche on display. Tucker takes an entirely internal process — picking clothes out to walk the hundred or so steps from player entrance to locker room — and turns it into ceremony.

In light of new protocol that required players arrive to games at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex “in uniform and warm-ups,” tunnel looks initially seemed effectively banned in the bubble. In large part this was due to logistics. Players can’t shower at arenas and locker space is limited, the emphasis is to be game-ready on arrival. Whether it was initial misinformation or the league adjusting its approach in order to hear out players and stay flexible, the official language now stands that players can arrive in “relaxed” items of clothing from their own wardrobes so long as it is “clean and neat in appearance”.

Tunnel looks, treated as high art by Tucker, Russell Westbrook, Kelly Oubre Jr. and others are mood made sartorial. They are players dressing the part as much as projecting. A look as intention — for personal performance, team reputation, even an extension of dialogue. Westbrook dressing as an official photographer with a safety vest that explicitly said so was as much a dig at Kevin Durant as an immaculate example of conceptual performance art. The point is to show an embossed or emboldened version of oneself, to leave little to the imagination. Even a look that seems second thought — sweats, loose layers, a mismatch of color — has a point to make. Comfort, appearing so casual like one can’t be bothered to dress for this team, this player, this match or moment, projects a kind of unflappable, impossible to duplicate ease. On the other end of the spectrum, dressing loud with color blocks or power clashing, removes any trace of anonymity going into a game.

For athletes like Tucker, this elevation went beyond honing style, it signified a different, entirely professional level of importance of the games themselves and by extension, the point he considered himself to be at in his career.

“Getting dressed at the hotel now will feel like an AAU tournament,” Tucker told ESPN’s Nick DePaula, in response to their initial report that tunnel dressing would cease in the bubble. “It’s [like] AAU Nationals, it’s the Nike Super Showcase and one of those [tournaments] that we used to play in back in the day. I’m not feeling it. It just doesn’t feel NBA to me.”

And before the end result comes the process itself. Setting intention via the act of choosing what to wear and why. It’s likely you’ve ritualized dressing at some point in life, choosing clothing like armour or camouflage for an event you were nervous for or adhered to a dress-code for a landmark moment in the life of someone you love.

“I think that takes away [from] originally what getting dressed was all about.” Tucker said on his approach to the act of dressing itself, “It wasn’t even about the tunnel walk, it was more about getting dressed up and going to work. To me, it’s like a mindset, getting dressed and getting ready to go to my game. It puts me in the mindset that I’m ready to work and helps me find my focus.”

Dressing for the tunnel can seem a frivolous facet of the game until, as it is with most things deemed less serious, the real depth and potential comes when the source of that levity is distilled down to all the different parts that tend to make the lightest things in life the most impactful. Now, players who choose to engage in tunnel looks will need to bring three changes of clothing to any given game. What they arrive in, uniforms for play, and clothes to travel back to their hotels and rooms in. Because of this, the ritual of dressing for the tunnel will gain another layer of deliberation in the bubble and tunnel looks may prove a needed outlet for the exertion of personal control in such an intensely regimented setting.

In some ways the NBA preemptively recognized the power of protecting its players psychic comforts. When restart plans began to take shape it was floated that team hardwood could be flown to Orlando to replicate some perception of home court. While the majority of the 20 courts that have ended up in the bubble are generic practice courts, and those that are team-specific were due to proximity to Orlando (the Heat and Magic courts) and availability (the otherwise inexplicability of the Pacers court, for example), the cost of transport, installation, and maintenance, is still justifiable against the price of asking athletes to sacrifice home — its comforts and sense of control — for months. It isn’t only for the sake of league-regulation familiarity, the gesture plays into morale, superstition and ultimately, performance.

In “Superstitions among basketball players”, a study by Hans G. Buhrmann and Maxwell K. Zaugg published by the Journal of Sport Behavior, it was shown that superstitious beliefs and rituals involving luck, such as what can be suggested in something like home court advantage, are demonstrated more frequently by “superior teams, as well as superior players within a team”. Even if they aren’t playing on their own courts, NBA practice courts will serve as a welcome stand-in for higher seeded teams and their players, who rely more heavily on rituals and their perceived outcome of luck. There are many reasons as to why but the strongest may be the simplest — these athletes are typically the most regimented, folding superstition into their routines, and have the most, competitively speaking, to lose.

Where the visual cue of familiar courts serves in keeping spirits light it does double duty in ritual. Players can ground themselves in woodgrain sourced with their benefit in mind. Take a moment of reprieve even in the strange, shining sea of courts set up side by side in a hotel ballroom, waiting on an inbound, a play to unfold, on what’s next. The kind of forward impulsion that’s entirely free of the stalling out the pandemic has made so pronounced and never-ending.

Revenue, too, responds better to players who are performing well given the current undeniable realities and their associated anxieties. However you feel about the restart, you’ll be watching to free your mind or ease it. To detect, as if it were possible, the inner workings of the bubble reflected on players faces or in how they’ll move across the floor. Broadcast numbers, in this hyper-specific case, will depend on the harder to pin emotional health of athletes as much as their physical well-being in the bubble. We want to see that the bubble’s been worth it. Psychic reprieve and performance, in this way, can translate directly to dollars. Like any ritual found to be effective, the results ripple out.

The Disney experiment is by no means a simple undertaking. It requires hundreds of people working around the clock behind the current cheery facade of players spending their time fishing and enjoying the player’s lounge or park amenities. It also requires a certain consistent suspension of disbelief. For players and for fans to buy in. To borrow from Disney, like Peter Pan’s Neverland or Dumbo clutching the magic feather, if we stop believing, if players grow uncomfortable, anxious or doubtful in the necessity to continue, then things come crashing down.

To this end it behooves the league to be an active, agile responder, even to player requests that seem light or nonessential. Players wanted access to barbers in the bubble and after a few weeks of room calls, there’s now a pop-up barbershop to house the 6 barbers vetted by the NBPA. Players keep their cuts fresh and gain a sense of routine, not to mention the cathartic experience of sitting down in a barber’s chair to talk or simply drift.

Rituals help in reducing anxiety and coping with stress and there has never been a season like this, nor has one faced such an accelerated push during the most pressurized point of its seasonal arc. Teams will clinch playoff positions, teams will be eliminated after fulfilling the organizational hurdles and personal sacrifices to get into the bubble. Players will be attempting to emulate the physical peaks their bodies would have achieved at this point, when things resume, in a normal season. Their minds will be expected to follow. Where certain habits will be impossible to fulfil in the bubble, the league can introduce avenues to new ones, as it did with the option of tunnel dressing. And where habits will shift after two weeks or two months, due to fatigue, disinterest, malaise, locational and emotional burnout, it can facilitate and help players to navigate smoother transitions through these natural dips and plateaus.

As time goes on and teams go home, the bubble will contract. There’ll be fewer players and their habits to account for but the stakes of play will be much higher, the stress and fatigue of the bubble greater too. If superstitions and rituals have been positively linked to athletes performing “better in various motor and cognitive tasks compared with participants for whom no such concept was activated” (Damisch, Stoberock and Mussweiler), a renewed attention to player’s ritualistic habits will be critical as playoffs narrow.

The bubble is primarily a means of entertainment, but for the players participating their typical coping methods and routines have been stripped away in order to provide it. Rituals are power, they provide a padding of control where there is none, a psychological bubble where belief can prove greater than reality. The Orlando bubble will have many lasting impacts, some impossible to recognize until the league is seasons past it. But the repercussions of how well the NBA can draw parallels between the bubble of external entertainment and its players own psychic comforts — one for promotion, the other to carefully nurture and shrewdly protect — will ripple out instantly, with a transcendental reach capable of touching everything.

Keeping up with the best 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 a big return from country icons and DJ Khaled drop a pair of new songs with his most famous collaborator. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

DJ Khaled — “Greece” and “Popstar” Feat. Drake

Drake and DJ Khaled have come together to make magic before, and last week, they did it again. The pair teased Khaled’s upcoming album, Khaled Khaled, with a duo of singles, “Greece” and “Popstar,” the former of which recently made waves in an unreleased form.

Kyle — See You When I Am Famous

Kyle has been one of the happiest-sounding dudes in rap since his emergence, and he’s basking in more rays of sunshine on his sophomore effort. Joining him in the light are Bryson Tiller, Iann Dior, K Camp, Rico Nasty, Tyga, Raphael Saadiq, and Too Short.

The Chicks — Gaslighter

Uproxx’s Caitlin White says of the comeback effort from the group formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, “After the hellfire and the fury, after the gaslighting, the pain, and the whole damn thing, this album yields something pure and uncompromising: A group of women who won’t back down, who continue to live and sing their truth, whether it comes to an entire industry, or a cheating husband.”

Idles — “A Hymn”

Ever a colorful group, Idles describes their latest, “‘A Hymn’ is a hymn that rejoices in the sinister flesh-eating virus of the pedestrian. It sings the tune of normal’s teeth sinking into your neck as you sleep stood up with your eyes open. Amen.”

Matt Berninger — “Distant Axis”

Word of a solo album from The National’s Matt Berninger has been lingering for well over a year, and the band leader has made good on it recently. The latest preview of Serpentine Prison is “Distant Axis,” which was inspired by working with The Walkmen’s Walter Martin.

Anne-Marie and Doja Cat — “To Be Young”

Doja Cat is a hot collaborator to snag right now, and Anne-Marie did so with her latest 2020 single, “To Be Young.” Anne-Marie, of course, is no stranger to working with big-time artists, as she has previously collabed with Marshmello, Nick Jonas, and Major Lazer.

Blu & Exile — Miles: From An Interlude Called Life

In a recent Uproxx interview about the duo’s new album, Exile asked Blu, “I’ve seen your writing process and I know how you get inspiration for individual bars. I’ve seen how it works. But what I don’t know is, is that it’s almost been 20 years we’ve known each other, you have maintained the same level of hunger for this thing that many, many, many of our peers lost. How do you maintain that level of motivation? That level of still caring about each individual line, like the way you do?”

Guapdad 4000 — “No Home For The Brave”

Following a surreal collaboration with Denzel Curry, recent UPROXX Sessions star Guapdad 4000 returned last week with “No Home For The Brave.” Uproxx’s Wongo Okon called the song an “easygoing track finds him in a reflective light as he points out the dangers in the world and the constant reminders of its existence.”

Joey Badass — The Light Pack

Joey has done a lot since releasing All-Amerikkkan Badass three years ago — acting, philanthropy, modeling, Beast Coast, etc. Now, though, he’s back to doing things by himself on a new trio of songs. He’s not entirely alone, though, as Pusha T guests on “No Explanation.”

Will Butler — “Surrender”

Beyond his contributions to Arcade Fire, Will Butler has had a nice solo career going on as well. He has a new album on the way, and his latest preview of it is the jaunty “Surrender,” the video for which doubles as a pandemic vlog.

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

When asked whether he’d ever return to Star Wars, Oscar Isaac memorably answered, “If I need another house or something.” He’s not the only prequel trilogy star who doesn’t plan on returning to a galaxy far, far away, either.

John Boyega, who played Finn in The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker, recently uploaded a photo to Instagram showing himself sitting in what appears to be a dentist’s office. But it’s actually a movie set, with the actor adding the caption, “Back on set! Have a nice day everyone.” (Looking at his IMDb, it’s maybe Rebel Ridge, a Netflix thriller from Green Room writer/director Jeremy Saulnier.) His Instagram followers brought it back to Star Wars, of course, with one writing, “Force Finn in action with Green lightsaber dressed in black is all I want from the next SW film!”

Boyega responded: “lol no thank you. I’ve moved on [heart emoji].” Here’s more:

User @samkim_1 then wrote, “Really just got those Disney bucks and dipped [laugh crying emoji],” to which Boyega responded: “nope. Not into playing one role for too long. I have more to offer than that. That’s all.” Another fan, @anthony_m95, wrote: “you know they’re bad movies when even you don’t wanna go back to them… excited to see you in future projects though!” Boyega did not respond to this nor other fan messages as the debate raged on

After The Rise of Skywalker, I’m ready to move on from Star Wars, too. (Feel free to argue about J.J. vs. Rian in the comments below. Or on Reddit, or Twitter, or anywhere but Boyega’s mentions. He’s got other, more genuinely important things on his mind.)

(Via Variety)

After a decade of calling “these bitches” her “sons,” Nicki Minaj is about to become a mother for real. The “Trollz” rapper revealed that she is heavily pregnant with a surprise baby bump photo on Instagram captioned, simply, “Preggers.”

The baby will be Nicki’s first, presumably with husband Kenneth Petty, whom she married in October of 2019. Shortly before that, she said that she was “retiring” from the rap game to focus on starting a family, which it seems she’s at least part way following through on. Of course, the retirement half of that announcement was seemingly exaggerated; while she has become much less active on social media and seems to keep to herself more often these days, she’s maintained a semi-prolific output of tracks that have kept her name buzzing — and caused controversy — over the past several months.

In late 2019, Nicki appeared on the soundtrack to the latest installment of the Charlie’s Angels movie franchise, then teased a new song, “Yikes,” which prompted a minor backlash over a lyric about Rosa Parks. She then appeared on the remix of Doja Cat’s disco-pop hit “Say So,” garnering her first-ever No. 1 record.

Meanwhile, her latest collaboration was once again controversial as she reunited with Tekashi 69 for “Trollz,” which scored Nicki yet another No. 1 despite fan outcry. Whatever happens with her new baby, one thing is for sure; the kid is very likely set for life thanks to mama’s savvy business moves and unflinching willingness to keep her name in the conversation. Congratulations, Nicki Minaj, and good luck.

On Sunday, Kanye West held a rally in South Carolina, ostensibly to launch his bid for the Presidency but more likely as a way to promote his upcoming new album named for his mother. During the rally, though, Kanye returned to one of his familiar, frustrating talking points from his 2018 promotion cycle: the topic of slavery.

This time, rather than saying slavery “sounds like a choice,” he took issue with one of the more historical figures in American history, Harriet Tubman, saying that the well-known freedom fighter “never actually freed the slaves, she just had them work for other white people.” His latest statement not only prompted an immediate reaction from those in attendance, it also sparked a wave of responses from his musical peers online once video began to circulate.

One of the first to chime in was 50 Cent, who posted a rip of the video to his Instagram and joked, “This is all Jay-Z fault.”

Meanwhile, Snoop Dogg was more subtle, posting a photo of Harriet Tubman herself with the caption “thank you, queen Harriet,” and addressing Kanye directly, “[Praying] for you, brother.”

Over on Twitter, a diverse array of musicians including art rapper Jpegmafia, Billie Eilish producer Finneas, and more expressed hopes for Kanye’s help, with Finneas positing that the producer is “going through an episode and needs love and care from his friends and family” and Jpegmafia hoping “Kanye is ok.” See more responses from the music world below.

The John Wick franchise (which was previously known under a less-appealing name) probably never intended to reach an audience better suited for Al Pacino’s Scarface incarnation, but smugglers are gonna smuggle. One particular band of smugglers dug the Wick universe so much that they included a code name from the franchise, which made Italian police suspicious. (Italian police are also apparently familiar with John Wick characters. Keanu touches everything.)

TMZ reports that the smuggler-cinephiles stuffed a package full of coffee beans, which were actually stuffed with cocaine, into a package, which they addressed to “Santino D’Antonio.” Wick fans will recognize that name as belonging to a mafia-boss-antagonist character who surfaced in the second movie, and the ruse was soon over.

“The coked-up beans were shipped from Medellin in Colombia to Milan’s Malpensa airport,” TMZ posted. “[T]he 2kg package contained 150g of cocaine powder via about 500 beans.” Not only that, but the address on the package led to a Florence tobacco shop, where a 50-year-old gentleman attempted to pick up the high-octane goods and received a pair of handcuffs instead.

Sadly, there were no horse chases or zooming motorcycles or ninjas reported in this incident, but one never knows, really. Tick tock and coffee beans.. there’s another (bad) joke to be made in there somewhere.

(Via TMZ)

Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, who went public with his stage IV pancreatic cancer diagnosis last year, gave an update on his health during an interview with Good Morning America on Monday. Trebek was told by his doctor that “he is counting on me celebrating two years of survivorship past the diagnosis of stage IV pancreatic cancer, and that two years happens in February,” he said. “So I expect to be around — because he said I will be around — and I expect to be hosting the show if I am around.”

Trebek, whose first memoir comes out this week, has his good days and his bad days (“There was one day a few weeks ago when [Trebek’s wife] Jeanie asked me in the morning, ‘How do you feel?’ And I said, ‘I feel like I wanna die.’ It was that bad”), but his experimental treatment is “going in the right direction.” That being said, if it stops working, he’s “not going to go to any extraordinary measures to ensure my survival”:

When he had to explain it to his family, the game show host said it was “tough,” but “they handled it beautifully.”

“They understand that there is a certain element regarding quality of life,” said Trebek. “And if the quality of life is not there — it’s hard sometimes to push. And just say, well, I’m gonna keep going even though I’m miserable.”

You can watch Trebek’s GMA interview below.

A deluxe edition of Pop Smoke’s new album, Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon, has been rumored since the start of the month. That news was officially confirmed over the weekend, and today, on what would have been the rapper’s 21st birthday, the expanded edition of the album has arrived.

Heralding the release is a video for “The Woo,” Smoke’s collab with 50 Cent and Roddy Ricch. The clip doesn’t stray far off the beaten path of traditional hip-hop videos: 50 Cent and Ricch perform the song among cars and women, with archival footage of Smoke in a tour bus and on stage interspersed throughout.

The deluxe edition of Shoot For The Stars adds 15 new tracks to the album, including guest appearances from Fivio Foreign, PnB Rock, Jamie Foxx, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Burna Boy, Gunna, and Young Thug. One guest you won’t see on the album, though, is Pusha T. He was originally included, but demanded to be removed from the deluxe release over a dispute with Thug.

Watch the “The Woo” video above.

Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon is out now via Victor Victor Worldwide and Republic Records. Get it here.

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

After a three-week hiatus, HBO’s Last Week Tonight returned with… nothing to talk about. Everything’s hunky dory as is. If only. Actually, last night’s episode was centered around coronavirus conspiracy theories, “particularly why they’re so appealing, how to spot them, and what you might be able to do about it,” host John Oliver explained.

After acknowledging that conspiracy theories are popular because “they help explain a chaotic, uncertain world and appeal to the human impulse to what’s called proportionality bias,” Oliver noted that when confronted with someone genuinely believes that, say, chemicals are making frogs gay, you shouldn’t try to make fun of them for believing something so incredibly stupid, as tempting as it is. Rather, he said, “What experts say is that the most effective way to approach someone is not by shaming them for believing something, or overwhelming them with counter-evidence, but to try and be empathetic, meet them where they are, and nudge them to think a bit more critically.”

Or, y’know, get famous people to educate your conspiracy theorist family members. For your wrestling-loving aunt, there’s John Cena. For your game show-obsessed uncle, there’s Alex Trebek. For your fashion-obsessed cousin, there’s Billy Porter. And for everyone, there’s Catherine O’Hara and Paul Rudd. If those two can’t get through to these people, no one can. To find the clips, which “gently [urge] anyone who watches it to be careful with what they encounter and share online,” head to The True True Truth.

Here are links to the individual videos, in case that site crashes: Alex Trebek, John Cena, Billy Porter, Paul Rudd, and Catherine O’Hara.