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In her Saturday Night Live monologue, host and double-duty musical guest Dua Lipa joked about her jet-setting social media presence. “There’s people online who say Dua Lipa is always on vacation, which is totally wrong,” she said. “I’m British and we call it a holiday.” But even eternal vacations, sorry, eternal holidays have their perils.

An impossibly glamorous Dua Lipa appears on the cover of Radical Optimism, her new album and first since 2020’s Grammy-winning blockbuster Future Nostalgia. In the image, she’s floating in idyllic water — save for the shark a few feet away from her. The how-to-remain-calm-in-shark-infested-waters visual metaphor isn’t exactly subtle, but Dua Lipa doesn’t do subtle. She’s one of the best at making universally understood pop music about the joys (the water) and danger (the shark) of romance.

The message might not be radical, but the finished product is. In an era of quantity-over-quality albums with bloated tracklists to manipulate the streaming charts, there is something radical about 11 breezy songs in under 40 minutes.

Forget the song of the summer — Radical Optimism sounds like summer.

Radical Optimism begins with a “1, 2, 3” countdown before a group of voices cheer with the enthusiasm of a surprise party when the birthday boy or girl walks through the door. “What’s it about a kiss that makes me feel like this? / Makes me an optimist, I guess,” Lipa sings. That’s a common theme of the album, this attempt at finding her romantic bliss. In “Training Season,” she asks a partner if they’re someone who’s worth her love, or “just the poison that I’m drawn to?” Lipa isn’t reinventing the wheel lyrically (or even reinventing her dance-pop sound, despite earlier comments about the album being a “psychedelic-pop-infused tribute to U.K. rave culture”), but she’s inhabiting her songs so fully that you’re too busy dancing to notice.

First single “Houdini” sparkles and slinks with the best of her chart-toppers; “Happy For You” shows her range as an expressive vocalist; and during album highlight “Falling Forever,” she howls like a werewolf at the moon over rolling drums. The production from high-profile names like Danny L Harle (who previously worked with Caroline Polachek) and Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, is precise, but never suffocating. The songs sound light, carefree even.

But that’s the goal, and anyone who sees that as a negative is missing the point. “I think there’s just this massive stigma around pop music overall,” Lipa told CBC. “If you’re just making songs that feel good — that have the aim to make you feel positive, make you feel good — [people assume] they don’t have depth.” She added, “I’m manifesting these words and I’m going to be saying them to a lot of people who are going to be singing them back to me. Let’s put some good sh*t out into the world.”

Radical Optimism is some good sh*t. It’s supremely crafted and refreshingly free of nods to her personal life. Dua Lipa is extremely online, but there remains a mystery to her. She’s never truly knowable, and she’s not trying to be, either. But that lack of reliability (see: the vacation photos) is one of the things that makes her so captivating. I don’t want pop stars to be my friend; I need them to believe in the healing power of pop music. Dua Lipa is a believer.

Out there [points in the general direction of the world], things are bleak. But in the club playing the new Dua Lipa album, everything’s going to be okay.

Radical Optimism is out now via Warner Records. You can order it here.

At this point, the ongoing beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake has permeated essentially the entirety of culture. Need proof? Joe Biden’s team is capitalizing on the situation to go after Donald Trump.

A video shared on social media by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ campaign team on May 6 is set to the part of Kendrick Lamar’s “Euphoria” that goes, “It’s always been about love and hate, now let me say I’m the biggest hater / I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress / I hate the way that you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it’s gon’ be direct.”

That scores a gallery of Trump photos and text subtitles showing off alternate lyrics, which read, “It’s always been about love and hate, now let me say I’m the biggest hater. I hate the way that you walk over women’s rights, the way that you talk about immigrants. I hate the way that you dress, I hate the way that you sneak diss on Truth Social.”

Meanwhile, Seth Rogen just joked about the beef at his Seth Smokes The Bowl event last night, saying in part, “Could you imagine going to a club and seeing a room full of people dancing to a song about you being a pedophile?”

Stephen Colbert finally found his breaking point in Donald Trump‘s hush money trial. Or should I say, his puking point?

During Tuesday’s episode of The Late Show, Colbert recapped the testimony given by adult film actress and author Stormy Daniels about her alleged sexual affair with the former president. “It was an historic day in the annals of American law, because today Stormy Daniels did what she does best, and that’s spank Donald Trump,” the host said. According to CNN:

In a mostly casual and conversational tone, Daniels recounted details from the floors and furniture in Trump’s hotel room to the contents of his toiletry kit in the bathroom. At one point in court, Daniels threw back her arm and lifted her leg in the witness box to re-create the moment she says Trump posed on his hotel bed for her, stripped down to his undergarments.

Among the claims made by Daniels were that she “spanked” Trump “right on the butt” with a magazine, and that after using the bathroom, she returned to the room to find him in nothing but boxers and a t-shirt. “At first I was just startled, like a jump scare. I wasn’t expecting someone to be there, especially minus a lot of clothing,” she said. Trump also allegedly told Daniels that “you remind me of my daughter,” Ivanka.

Here’s how Colbert reacted to that bit of news:

You can watch The Late Show clip above.

(Via CNN)

These days, it’s hard to count on Kanye West to do something when he says he’s going to do it. His and Ty Dolla Sign’s album Vultures 2 was originally supposed to drop in March, but it’s still not out yet, despite being given a May 3 release date recently. Another thing West has had in the chamber is launching a porn studio, but now it looks like that may not be happening at all.

As Kurrco notes, all posts related to Yeezy Porn have been removed from Ye’s X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube accounts, which seems to suggest that West is dropping the whole thing.

https://twitter.com/kurrco/status/1787925604882350204

This comes shortly after Milo Yiannopoulos, West’s chief of staff, shared a letter reading, “I cannot be complicit in the production or dissemination of pornographic films and literature, for moral and religious reasons, but also because such material and the kind of people invariably involved in its production represent an imminent danger to my life as a recovering addict and an unacceptable risk to my spiritual and physical health as a former homosexual.”

Meanwhile, last month, West attempted to insert himself into the Drake/Kendrick Lamar feud with a “Like That” remix, although the song has proven to be relatively inconsequential in the context of the beef.

Ian Gelder, the actor who played Kevan Lannister on HBO‘s Game of Thrones, has died. He was 74 years old.

“It is with huge huge sadness and a heavy heart broken into a million pieces that I’m leaving this post to announce the passing of my darling husband and life partner Ian Gelder,” fellow actor Ben Daniels wrote in a heartbreaking tribute on Instagram. “Ian was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in December and yesterday he passed at 13.07. I’d stopped all work to be his carer but neither of us had any idea that it would all be so fast.”

Daniels called Gelder his “absolute rock and we’d been partners for more than 30 years. If we weren’t together we spoke to each other everyday. He was the kindest, most generous spirited and loving human being. He was a wonderful wonderful actor and everyone who worked with him was touched by his heart and light… He coped with his dreadful illness with such bravery, with no self pity. Ever. He was remarkable and will be so missed.”

Gelder appeared in 12 episodes of Game of Thrones as the brother of Lord Tywin Lannister and possibly the most decent member of the family (he also memorably defies Cersei). The veteran character actor also had roles in Doctor Who, Torchwood: Children of Earth, and His Dark Materials.

You can read the full Instagram post below.

Last night (May 7), Seth Rogen hosted Seth Smokes The Bowl, a Hilarity For Charity benefit event at the Hollywood Bowl. The event featured various performers, and at one point between acts, Rogen shared his take on the ongoing Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef.

Rogen started, “If you’re a rap fan, there’s some crazy sh*t going on right now.” He then gave a broad overview of the situation, summarizing by saying the two are feuding by writing “mean rhymes about each other.” When he got the point of Lamar’s “Not Like Us” and Drake’s “The Heart Part 6,” specifically how Lamar accused Drake of an inappropriate interest in underage women and Drake refuted it, Rogen said, “I would say as soon as you are asserting in a rap song that you should not be a registered sex offender, you’ve lost the rap battle.”

He added, “What’s crazy is these are not, like, personal correspondences: These are songs! These are hit songs! These are No. 1 and 2 on iTunes, like, right now! These are songs the Apple algorithm is telling my mother to listen to while working out.”

He then compared the song to Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” which is famously believed to be about Dave Coulier. After pointing out the relative mystery behind the song’s official, confirmed meaning, Rogen continued, “But now Kendrick is like, ‘F*ck you Drake, you’re a pedophile.’ And these are hit… people are dancing to these songs! Could you imagine going to a club and seeing a room full of people dancing to a song about you being a pedophile? Especially if you were one? I don’t know if he is, but if he was, I assume that’d be a very alarming moment in your life. ‘Oh no, they’re on to me.’”

Check out the clip above.

The Oklahoma City Thunder put on a show in their first Western Conference Semifinal game since 2016. Playing in front of a delirious hometown crowd against the Dallas Mavericks, Oklahoma City used Game 1 of their series to make a statement that they’re as serious of a championship contender as anyone in the league. Thanks to a big night by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and an impressive, team-wide performance on the defensive end of the floor, the Thunder went up in the series, 1-0, after a 117-95 win.

The two teams spent much of the first quarter feeling one another out. Neither side was able to open up a lead of more than three points, and things were all tied up at 23 following the opening 12 minutes. Each team’s biggest star — Luka Doncic for the Mavs and Gilgeous-Alexander for the Thunder — had eight points to lead the way.

Gilgeous-Alexander went on to take over the next two quarters. Oklahoma City took a 62-53 lead into the locker room at halftime and held onto a 89-79 lead after three because their MVP finalist at guard rose to the occasion in a big way. The savvy, efficient game of Gilgeous-Alexander was a problem that the Mavericks struggled to solve, regardless of who they threw at him.

Still, Dallas gave themselves a chance entering the fourth, as they never quite let things get out of hand — they managed to get the Thunder lead down to one at one point. Whether it was a big shot by Kyrie Irving, a thunderous dunk by Derrick Jones, Jr., or something else, the team did everything it could to keep Oklahoma City within shouting distance, even as Doncic struggled from the field thanks in part to his time spent in the Dorture Chamber.

As has been the case for much of the season, the Thunder showed off impressive maturity in the fourth quarter considering how young their team is. Any time the Mavericks — namely Irving — tried to build up the tiniest bit of momentum, Oklahoma City was immediately able to figure out an answer to put out any fires before they could pop up.

And then, the Thunder were able to really put their foot on the gas. Thanks to a 15-2 run, the team was able to open up a 22-point lead that sent the home crowd into a frenzy — and after a timeout, Mavs coach Jason Kidd threw up the white flag, as he emptied his bench with 5:12 remaining in the game.

Gilgeous-Alexander was the star on the evening, as he went for 29 points with nine rebounds, nine assists, two blocks, and a steal in 37 minutes of work. Chet Holmgren was sensational with 19 points, seven rebounds, three blocks, and two steals, while Jalen Williams scored 10 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter. For the Mavs, Irving had 20 points and Doncic had 19, but basically everything went wrong for them on the offensive end of the floor. The team shot 39.3 percent from the field and 34.3 percent from three, and turned the ball over 15 times, nine of which came from their two stars.

Game 2 between the Mavs and the Thunder will take place on Thursday night, and is scheduled to tip off at 9:30 p.m. EST on ESPN.

The Oklahoma City Thunder are playing host to the Dallas Mavericks in Game 1 of the Western Conference Semifinals, and unsurprisingly, it’s been quite the spectacle watching the upstart Thunder bring high-level playoff basketball back to Paycom Center. Throughout their magical season, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has established himself as one of the very best players in the NBA due to his craftiness and ability to get a clean shot off.

Gilgeous-Alexander has long been praised for making this look easy, as he has quite the bag of tricks he can dip into when he has to figure out how to create some space. Unfortunately, one of those tricks came at the expense of Derrick Jones Jr., who attempted to check the MVP finalist, fouled SGA in the process, and got kicked below the belt for his troubles.

Obviously this is an accident, and Gilgeous-Alexander was not actively trying to kick Jones between the legs. However, Jones made an aggressive attempt to contest Gilgeous-Alexander’s stepback, and as a result, Gilgeous-Alexander kicking his leg out meant that he got kicked square in the nuts. If there is any silver lining for Jones here, it’s that Gilgeous-Alexander got hit with a technical foul, so even if this did not make things hurt any less, at least he can say he helped his team get at least one point back.

Could the long-brewing feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar finally be coming to an end? Over the course of the past few weeks, Drake and Lamar have dropped several diss tracks aimed at each other. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse, after Drake’s bodyguard was reportedly shot near Drake’s Toronto home.

Neither Drake nor Lamar have commented directly on the matter, however, neither party has dropped a diss track since the incident. Many fans are wondering if the labels have since gotten involved, asking to end the beef.

Did Drake’s label ask Kendrick Lamar to end their rap beef?

A screenshot of a supposed blind item went viral on Twitter today (May 7), alleging that Universal Music Group had reached out to Lamar and his pgLang brand, as well as The Weeknd, asking them to end the feud, and to walk back comments calling Drake a pedophile.

https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1788005367428854154ce

The supposed blind item noted that Drake, Nike, and other parties involved were losing a lot of money, as Drake was losing the beef.

However, TMZ has said there is no truth to this blind item, and that the claims are entirely unfounded.

TMZ reported that sources close to the matter — who, evidently, are knowledgeable of how labels works — had not gotten involved, and likely, wouldn’t get involved with matters like this.

But given recent events, it seems as though continuing the feud would be in poor taste.

A screening of The Garfield Movie in Spain turned into a showdown.

Earlier this week, Spanish boxer Antonio Barrul, a six-time national champion at amateur level who turned pro last year, had brought his son and his wife to a showing of The Garfield Movie in León, Spain. While in attendance, Barrul noticed someone who was also there with his partner, however, he did not like the way the man was treating the woman.

Barrul walked down several rows of seats and confronted the man, before punching him, which resulted in the man falling to the ground.

Clips of the altercation soon went viral on social media. Barrul eventually went on record via Radioestadio Noche (per Daily Express) to explain what happened and to show remorse for how it went down.

“He started to threaten me and it got worse and worse until I decided to go down [to where he was sitting],” Barrul said. “I couldn’t control myself and what you see in the video happened.”

While he admits he felt justified in his reaction, he says he would handle it diffently

“I apologized in the cinema and publicly because those images do not make me proud,” he said. “What is shown in that video is not who I am. I would try to get the security to come and take him away. If security had come on time, many things could have been avoided.”

You can see a clip above.