In order to get Taylor Swift to do something for you, you have to know her pretty well. And while a superhero movie might not seem like a place that she would show up, she would definitely do a favor to help out one of her good friends, Ryan Reynolds.
Swift has helped Reynolds with his little projects before, in addition to wearing the actual Deadpool costume for Halloween one year. So it really wouldn’t be that hard for her to make an appearance in the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine, though director Shawn Levy isn’t spilling any secrets.
At this year’s CimenaCon, Levy was asked by ET if he could reveal any cameo info, but the director played coy. “You know I can’t answer. All of America knows I can’t answer that. That is hardly confirmed nor denied in this interview,” he replied, adding that the only way to know for sure is to buy a ticket. “The proliferation of rumors about who is and isn’t in this movie–it’s fabulous. No one will ever know the truth until July 26.”
Last fall, Swift was spotted with Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, which only fueled the rumors that she would appear in their upcoming flick. While a cameo isn’t confirmed, rumors have been swirling that Swift would appear as Dazzler, a pop star superhero, though wouldn’t she want to play something different than her everyday job title? Let’s get Swift as a villain one of these days. It would be a perfect easter egg for the Rep era.
The thing about Gen X being in our 40s and 50s now is that we were never supposed to get “old.” Like, we’re the cool, aloof grunge generation of young tech geniuses. Most of the giants that everyone uses every day—Google, Amazon, YouTube—came from Gen X. Our generation is both “Friends” and “The Office.” We are, like, relevant, dammit.
And also, our backs hurt, we need reading glasses, our kids are in college and how in the name of Jennifer Aniston‘s skincare regimen did we get here?
It’s weird to reach the stage when there’s no doubt that you aren’t young anymore. Not that Gen X is old—50 is the new 30, you know—but we’re definitely not young. And it seems like every day there’s something new that comes along to shove that fact right in our faces. When did hair start growing out of that spot? Why do I suddenly hate driving at night? Why is this restaurant so loud? Does that skin on my arm look…crepey?
As they so often do, Penn and Kim Holderness from The Holderness Family have captured the Gen X existential crisis in a video that has us both nodding a long and laughing out loud. Salt-n-Pepa in the waiting room at the doctor’s office? Uh, no. That’s a line we are not ready to cross yet. Nirvana being played on the Classic Rock station? Nope, not prepared for that, either.
Watch:
Hoo boy, the denial is real, isn’t it? We grew up on “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, for goodness sake, and it’s starting to feel like we made a wrong choice a chapter or two back and suddenly landed our entire generation in a time warp. This isn’t real, is it? Thirty years ago was the 1970s. That’s just a Gen X fact. So what if we’ve lived long enough for our high school fashions to go out of style and then back into style and then back out of style again?
Seriously, though, we can either lament our age and stage in life or we can laugh about it, and people are grateful to the Holdernesses for assisting with the latter. Gen X fans are also thrilled to see their own experiences being validated, because at this point, we’ve all had that moment in the grocery store or the waiting room when one of our jams came on and we immediately went into a panic.
“They were playing The Cure in the grocery store and I almost started crying,” wrote one commenter. “I mean, how ‘alternative’ can you be if you’re being played in Krogers? You guys are great! Thanks for making us laugh.”
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard Bohemian Rhapsody being played in Walmart,” shared another. “That was edgy in my day.”
“I know!!! Bon Jovi at the grocery store!!! That was my clue in!!” added another.
If you were old enough to be anywhere near a TV screen in 1994, there’s one distinctive image that you can probably remember without even trying: O.J. Simpson‘s white Ford Bronco leading the police down the freeway 405 in Los Angeles in one of the most infamous high speed chases of all time.
After the double murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, the recently deceased NFL star was the prime suspect, and he certainly wasn’t helping his case by fleeing from the police. As his longtime friend and fellow NFL player Al Cowlings drove the white Bronco, The Juice sat in the backseat with a loaded gun in one of the most riveting moments in American pop culture. The chase ultimately ended with Simpson surrendering to the police, and the Bronco went back into Cowlings’ possession.
Here’s a little known fact though: The Bronco was never Simpson’s. It was Cowlings’, but for obvious reasons, he never wanted to get inside the thing ever again. The former NFL star quickly got to work unloading the vehicle. However, Cowlings eventually “scotched” a deal as he realized the Bronco might be worth a whole lot more as Simpson’s trial kicked off a media frenzy.
According to a 2014 investigation by USA Today, Cowlings ultimately sold the Bronco to Michael Pulwer, “The Porn King” owner of an adult film company. From there, the Bronco traded hands several times and popped up all over the country before landing at its current resting place.
The Bronco now sits at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee along with John Dillinger’s 1933 Essex Terraplane and Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen Beetle.
“It’s one of our most popular attractions,” the museum’s programs manager told The Hollywood Reporter. “People come from all over.”
Some sequels are unwarranted, some are welcomed. Having two data breaches over the span of six months fits in the latter category.
After disclosing a previous data leak last month that compromised over 15,000 accounts, Roku has informed customers that there has been yet another breach, this time affecting over half a million accounts. Roku claims that it currently has 80 million active users currently residing in the purple land of Roku City.
The company issued a blog post to explain the situation and provide important tips for securing accounts.
After concluding our investigation of this first incident, we notified affected customers in early March and continued to monitor account activity closely to protect our customers and their personal information. Through this monitoring we identified a second incident, which impacted approximately 576,000 additional accounts.
While the overall number of affected accounts represents a small fraction of Roku’s more than 80M active accounts, we are implementing a number of controls and countermeasures to detect and deter future credential stuffing incidents.
The company also added that the attackers did not acquire sensitive information such as credit card numbers or addresses. Any affected accounts have been notified and passwords have been automatically reset, while Roku suggests that all users should enable two-factor authentication, even if they were not affected by the breach.
Even though the breach happened on Roku, the company says that a third party was responsible for the breach, which happened through “credential stuffing.” Further: “We sincerely regret that these incidents occurred and any disruption they may have caused,” the company said.
You know how every time an actor lands a video game role they always claim to have been huge fans of the property for years? Well, in a refreshing bit of honesty, Fallout star Ella Purnell isn’t going that route.
While promoting her breakout performance as Lucy in the Amazon series that’s already racking up rave reviews, Purnell fully admitted that she’s not a gamer and had a rough time playing the Fallout game while preparing for the show.
“I’m not a gamer, but I tried to play Fallout,” Purnell recently told Variety without elaborating on which version she played. “I’m just not good at it, and that annoys me because I’m competitive. It was the controls that I didn’t get the hang of. My thumbs don’t control the right way.”
Walton Goggins, who plays fan-favorite character The Ghoul on the show, flat-out admitted that he has “zero” video game experience. “Mine ended with Galaga,” he said before revealing that he relied on his 13-year-old son to explain the finer points of the Fallout world to him.
As for Aaron Moten, who stars as Maximus a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, his research rested somewhere in the middle. The actor turned to Twitch streams to immerse himself in the quirky, yet wildly violent post-apocalyptic world.
Next week, the WNBA will welcome a potentially trajectory-altering draft class featuring Clark, LSU’s Angel Reese, Stanford’s Cameron Brink, South Carolina’s (and Women’s Final Four Most Outstanding Player) Kamilla Cardoso, Syracuse’s Dyaisha Fair, Tennessee’s Rickea Jackson, and UConn’s Aaliyah Edwards. But miss the WNBA with any rags-to-riches undertones.
Increasingly, NIL makes it easier for women’s college basketball players to develop into mainstream faces before shouldering the weight of professional franchises. The general public is obsessed with perpetuating the myth that college stars harm their earning potential by going to the W, but the discourse should redirect to understanding the upside because of the exposure the league is in a position to provide at this particular time.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert seems aware of the stakes. In part, she told CNBC that she expects to “at least double our rights fees” when the league’s current media rights deals with ESPN, CBS, ION, and Amazon Prime expire. Although the W recently extended with CBS and Prime Video, it’s possible that the league’s media rights will be up for grabs again in 2025, the same year players can opt out of the current CBA. Plainly, players cannot reap the rewards of the league’s growth, including a record number of corporate sponsorship dollars, without renegotiating revenue share, which directly impacts base salaries.
As a general rule, the NBA shouldn’t be the measuring stick for the WNBA, but the NBA’s 1990 media rights deal with NBC feels like relevant context here. At the time, NBC shelled out $600 million to take over for CBS, which had previously broadcast the NBA on a four-year, $176 million contract. Twelve years later, ABC, ESPN, and TNT were so eager to get in on the NBA that their collective media rights offer was worth up to $4.6 billion.
In 1990, the median NBA salary was $650,000, and the max was Patrick Ewing’s $4.25 million. In 2002-03, the median salary had ballooned to over $2.2 million, and Kevin Garnett was that season’s top salary earner at $25.2 million. (Obviously, in the two decades since, those benchmarks have continued to rise.)
These dollar amounts aren’t directly comparable, of course, but this aspect of the NBA’s past informs what a game-changing media-rights deal would do for ensuring a sustainable, thriving WNBA future. Engelbert acknowledged as much: “We’re setting this league up not just for the next 3-5 years with this next media-rights deal, but for the next 30.”
Los Angeles Sparks guard Lexie Brown provided a player’s perspective to Uproxx, saying, “You can’t support something that you’re never able to see. So, this negotiation period is going to be key to our growth globally and in the United States. I remember when I was in college [at Duke and Maryland], you had one channel for eight games. Depending on where you were in the country, that was the game you had access to. Now, everyone has a chance to be on TV and have their own stage to perform.”
While the lopsided attention paid to Clark’s performances is a point of contention, Brown believes the die-hard devotion to monitoring Clark’s every move will inevitably lead to exposure for all the players and teams deserving of the same energy.
“Every Caitlin Clark game should be televised,” Brown says. “Let’s not be dumb. That’s what the NBA did with [San Antonio Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama]. That’s what you should do with a star like that. If there’s ever a future where there will be multiple WNBA games on TV at once, I’ll lose my mind. But that takes investment, engagement, and genuine care.”
Brown is close to getting her wish. The Indiana Fever will surely draft Clark with the first pick to pair with 2023 No. 1 overall pick (and NIL-to-WNBA success story) Aliyah Boston, who oozes charisma in her own right and is the reigning WNBA Rookie of the Year. Not-so-coincidentally, the WNBA announced that 36 of the Indiana Fever’s 40 regular-season games in 2024 will be nationally televised — the most in the league, followed by the reigning back-to-back champion Las Vegas Aces (35) and 2023 runners-up New York Liberty (31).
The Fever’s ubiquitous visibility will be new in 2024, and the Clark phenomenon is an undeniable launching point, but countless women have steadily built this rocket ship. Last season was the WNBA’s most-watched regular season in 21 years, with a 21 percent spike from 2022. According to Bloomberg in April 2023, the W was projected to earn between $180 million and $200 million in combined revenue last season — up from $102 million in 2019. Yet, misconceptions about the WNBA’s viability persist because well-intentioned casual fans and misogynistic haters alike fixate on players’ salaries maxing out at $240,000.
“This downtrodden charity case persona that has followed the WNBA for so many years needs to be debunked, and I think we’re on our way to doing that,” Brown says. “I had to sit down with myself one day and be like, ‘Am I really letting these people make me feel bad about making six figures to play basketball?’”
The Aces have built perhaps the most well-rounded case for debunking that narrative. They just became the first-ever WNBA franchise to sell out season tickets because people will always crave proximity to dynastic dominance — fueled by one-of-one stars like A’ja Wilson, Candace Parker, Kelsey Plum, or Jackie Young. But irresistible appeal isn’t exclusive to Vegas. New York Liberty beat reporter Myles Ehrlich witnesses it covering the “Big Three” of Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu, and Jonquel Jones.
“Sab and Stewie are good examples in the New York market,” Ehrlich says. “They both had signature sneakers come out last year — with Nike and Puma, respectively — and it just goes to show that their brand is not negatively affected by having a WNBA platform rather than a college one. In fact, they’ve got more time without school or classes to pursue any extracurricular interests, and we’ve seen this more and more as players around the league have been taking on roles coaching or doing TV analyst work during their W offseasons.”
It’s an organic formula for habit-forming and sustainable cultural relevancy. Theoretically, players proactively introducing themselves to new audiences during the offseason prompts those people to want to invest time in watching their teams during the season. While the offseason still sees some playing overseas — not “to make ends meet” financially but more so to stay in game shape, according to Brown — more and more players are generating visibility through Athletes Unlimited and endorsements. WNBA players do the legwork, and it’s time for corporate and media magnates to show the same commitment.
“Our game has lacked star power — not because we don’t have stars, but because we didn’t have the machine behind it,” Brown says. “As soon as the WNBA understands that there can be more than one star, then the league is really going to take off. There will always be one or two faces of any league, but there are other stars and personalities [worth investing in].”
After the events of X, it would make sense for the lone survivor Maxine to retreat to a quiet life of anonymity, but she’s a star! So a measly little massacre surely isn’t going to stop her.
In the X trilogy, Mia Goth plays two distinct yet similar characters: Pearl and Maxine. 2022’s X was the first film featuring Goth as both Maxine and Pearl, the elderly woman who goes on a killing rampage. Director and writer Ti West immediately began making Pearl, a prequel featuring Goth as a young Pearl, while the upcoming MaXXXinewill be a sequel to X, with Goth reprising her role of Maxine.
She is a star. Also a murderer.
Maxxine takes place over five years after the events of X and follows the titular character as she pursues her dreams of being a movie star. “I see MaXXXine as a superhero movie – that’s how I read the script,” Goth recently told SFX Magazine. “Maxine, as a character, has come a long way. She’s a survivor, she’s gone through a lot. When we meet her again, in this new world that she’s in, she’s really fought for everything that she has, and she’s not about to give that up. She’s going to fight for what she has. She’s a badass. There’s a strength to her. And she’s a really proactive, determined, focused woman. She goes after what she wants, and she’s not really going to take no for an answer.”
MaXXXine, which also stars Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Lily Collins, Halsey, Giancarlo Esposito, and Kevin Bacon, opens in theaters on July 5.
In February, The Cut ran an eye-popping personal essay from one of its financial experts. Its title?The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger. What followed was a 5,000+ word odyssey of unbelievably baffling proportions, one that proved even the shrewdest, most financially literate among us could fall prey to an online scam.
That writer’s experience launched a fleet of think pieces, most wondering how a woman, whose entire career was based on doling out money advice to others, could’ve believed the FTC and CIA were working together to investigate a financial fraud case with her at its center. But, as wild as her story seemed, many financial experts warned it could happen to anyone.
Online scams once targeted the older crowd – Boomers and Gen X adults who wouldn’t necessarily be described as tech-savvy. They were the ones who would fall for phishing emails, click on suspicious links, and hand out their Social Security number over the phone to a customer service rep claiming to operate on their bank’s behalf. But now, with more sophisticated technology and dozens of new online avenues to reach their marks, scammers are coming for the Millennial and Gen Z crowds. A recent Deloitte survey found that Gen Z Americans were three times more likely to fall for a scam online than their grandparents. And, in 2023, the FTC reported that consumers lost over $10 billion to financial scammers.
Digital natives like to think they’re immune to online grifts but the reality is, scammers are finding more sinister ways of duping them – robbing them of their money and their sense of security online. But it doesn’t have to be that way. UPROXX chatted with Steve Grobman, the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for McAfee, a global security software company, to find out which scams Millennials and Gen Z are most likely to encounter online – and tips for how to avoid them.
Tip #1: Don’t Panic
One of the driving emotions that caused The Cut’s writer to act so irrationally was fear, something online scammers are surprisingly good at stoking in their marks. There’s a bit of psychological manipulation at play when it comes to scams that invoke authority or threaten our sense of privacy online. “A lot of these scams are engineered to create a sense of urgency to make the victim respond very quickly before they start asking questions,” Grobman explains. Two of the most common types of scams he sees targeting Gen Z and Millennial customers are sextortion scams and fake fraud investigations.
Sextortion scams work by convincing the victim that their private computer or cellphone has been hacked. The scammer is essentially holding their information hostage, threatening to release compromising photos, videos, webcam surveillance footage, or private browsing histories unless they pay up. “It is something that can become very personal and very scary,” Grobman says, but it’s also “a complete bluff.”
The same is true for calls and texts that claim to come from the IRS, ones that hope to convince victims that their bank account or Social Security info has been stolen or that they owe a ridiculous amount in unpaid taxes. The more elaborate schemes scare their targets by suggesting their identity has been used to commit criminal charges across state lines, or that they’ve racked up thousands in debt that could see them facing legal repercussions. Whatever the scenario, Grobman says to put the phone down and take a breath before responding.
“Just stop and think if this makes sense,” he advises. “If a firm calls and says, ‘You owe all of this money,’ well, how does this firm know anything about my taxes if they’re not the government? That’s private information.” Another helpful tip: The IRS normally contacts people via mail, not by calling or texting them directly.
Tip #2: Never Send Money To Someone You Don’t Know
If you’ve seen the Tindler Swindler, you know how dangerous the world of online dating can be, especially when it comes to financial scams. According to McAfee, 68% of 18 to 28-year-olds are using dating websites to meet people which makes apps like Tinder and Bumble the perfect hunting ground for con artists hoping to make a quick buck. The problem with dating sites, according to Grobman, is that users go in with the expectation of interacting with strangers which means their defenses are already lowered. “It’s one of these situations where you don’t know somebody in the physical world, but you can establish a deep emotional relationship with them in the digital world,” he says. “Then the way the cyber criminals convert that into money for them is some event happens, there’s a medical emergency, and they need money. More and more are trying to get their victims to invest in fake cryptocurrency investment scams.”
Whatever the ask, Grobman says the answer should be “no.” Never send money or gifts to someone you haven’t met in person, even if they send you money first.
Tip #3: Don’t Call Them Back
Most online scams that target Millennials and Gen Z depend on immediate action from their victims. That means they want you to provide information quickly over the phone, or respond directly to their texts and direct messages. Along with taking a beat to question their motives, Grobman recommends opening up your own line of communication — whether it’s with your bank, your credit card company, your Amazon Prime account, or the IRS.
“Don’t call back the number that was left,” he says. “Don’t reply to the email. You can call your credit card company, or you can call your bank. Sometimes millennials forget they can pick up the phone and actually reach out to one of these institutions with a credible number that they find on the official website and say, ‘Hey, I got this correspondence. I want to validate that it’s authentic.’”
Tip #4: Use Credit Cards Not Crypto
Crypto is the Wild West of the money world at the moment, taking its share of bad press, but a lot of people still want in. Grobman gets that, but all of the things that make cryptocurrency appealing to younger generations — fewer regulations, more freedom, and anonymity — are also what make it a buffet for scammers looking to hustle the unsuspecting. “There are a lot of safeguards that traditional financial institutions put in place that just don’t exist when you get into cryptocurrency,” Grobman explains. “You have to be really careful if you’re going to use this type of medium because if somebody steals your crypto, it’s gone and there’s really no way to get it back.”
The easiest rule to follow is to only trade in crypto with trusted sources — people you know, and organizations you trust. And really, that applies to every form of payment transfer. “Make sure you’re using a form of payment that is cancelable like a credit card,” Grobman says. “Do not use gift cards, do not wire money. Be extremely careful with things like Zelle or Venmo. Some of those are a lot more difficult to get back if there is fraud.”
Tip #5: Beware Of Deepfakes
A.I. might be the technological wave of the future but there are some drawbacks to that too, especially when it comes to how artificial intelligence is used in financial scams. With programs now able to mimic voices, generate text-to-speech commands, and create emails and texts that appear shockingly human, Grobman says deepfakes are going to be the most dangerous tool in a scammer’s arsenal in the coming years. “Just as legitimate businesses are using A.I. to get better levels of efficiency, we see cybercriminals leaning into using A.I. and technology as well,” he explains. “When they contact individuals, they can use things like clone voice technology or A.I. generated voice, which can be used in a few different ways. It can either sound like a loved one in a targeted attack. It can also be used more generally where it simply sounds like the culture of somebody you’d expect from a position of authority. So if they call and they say, ‘I’m from the IRS’ and they’ve got a Midwestern accent and you live in the Midwest, that’s not as much of a tip-off as if they sound like they’re from a foreign country where it might be more obvious that it’s a scam.”
Besides investing in security software trained to spot these deepfakes, Grobman hopes the younger gen will make it more difficult for scammers to wield A.I. by guarding their personal information online. “One of the advances that A.I. arms the cyber criminal with is, that it can create a custom scam against an individual that can be better tailored if there’s information about that person. So by being able to cite your school and all sorts of little tidbits of information that make it more credible, very often there’s more information to work within those younger generations that haven’t really thought, ‘Should I tell the entire world everything about me?”
The common thread in guarding against any of these types of online scams — whether it’s travel-related, romance-driven, or disguised as a job-hunting scheme — is to be alert, aware, and just a bit suspicious when it comes to your digital habits.
“Even though we live in the digital age that moves very fast, sometimes slowing it down a little bit to gain confidence that things are as they seem can help prevent a lot of problems,” Grobamn says. “It’ll help prevent the spread of disinformation. It’ll help prevent you from getting taken for a scam.”
“I use the term digital street smarts. When all of us operate in the physical world, if we’re in a shady neighborhood, we lock our car doors. We don’t have big wads of cash hanging out of our pockets. It doesn’t mean that we don’t do fun things to live our lives, but we take common sense precautions to protect ourselves in the physical world. We need to do that in the digital world too.”
Last month, a TikTok user made the absurd claim that Saturday Night Live has never hired a “hot woman.” In the video, which has over 5,000 I’m sure extremely normal comments, @Jahelis explained that she’s “not saying that every single woman on SNL is ugly, it’s just that none of them have ever been, like, hot. They all just kind of have looks that eventually grow on you.”
The TikTok caught the attention of the current SNL cast, including Sarah Sherman. “just found out i’m not hot. please give me and my family space to grieve privately and uglily at this time,” she wrote on X. The comedian now expresses regret over giving the video any attention.
“I shouldn’t have f*cking said f*cking anything because she said some sh*t for attention,” Sherman said on Dana Carvey and David Spade’s Superfly podcast, according to The Daily Beast. “I was mad at myself for the tweet.”
“She brings up women who are like, literally drop dead baba gaga gorgeous,” Sherman said. The TikToker singled out cast member Heidi Gardner as an example of the lack of female hotness on the show, saying “No offense to her, but she’s not that pretty.” Later in the video, she presents a conjoined photo of Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey Aidy Bryant, and others, calling them all “pretty average looking women.”
“What is she smoking?” Sherman continued, calling the women referenced “some of the most beautiful.”
Sherman was on the subway when she sent the tweet, “I immediately regretted tweeting it,” she said. “That’s what people want. They just want attention for one second. I didn’t want it to come across as defensive. People thought like I was legitimately upset and I’m like, no, I woke up ready to say something hilarious about grieving — uglily. But ultimately I wish I didn’t say anything because then it just made it a bigger deal.”
You know what is a big deal: Pop Crave cropping Sherman out of photos.
Juvenile is a bonafide hip-hop legend. Through the timelessness of his classic records, he has helped to cement the legacy of New Orleans’ Cash Money era while enjoying a cross-generational appeal via the magic of social media. Juvenile stays ubiquitous – you cannot go to a major event, a club night or even listen to a new music release without hearing Juvie’s influence or actual music and lyrics.
On his 3rd or 4th wave now, Juvenile’s most recent reinvention outside music revolves around strategic hometown partnerships and products that result from his burgeoning passion for all things culinary, along with his innate entrepreneurial spirit. Current plans beyond his already popular Juvie Juice and savory Cheewee’s snacks include his own coffee, a line of sauces and more varieties of Juvie Juice.
We got the lowdown on everything Juvie has in the pipeline, along with his recommendations for New Orleans hot spots and local gems. Juvie has us covered when it comes to the top crawfish and gumbo in NOLA, what makes Ruth Chris’ in ‘Nawlins like no other, and his personal snack indulgence; pretzels and Snickers mixed.
Whether it’s getting healthy with Caesar Salads and Nature’s Own granola bars, hitting every Benihana possible, playing the “Juvie Card” to get some late-night eggs at Waffle House or polishing off that mini-bar Toblerone, Juvenile is a man who knows exactly what he likes and wants at any given time. And if Juvie tells you that you look like a Toblerone kind of guy, that just means he sees a little bit of himself in you – there may be no better compliment. Join us and get to know the legendary “Ha” emcee, unlike you’ve ever known him before.
Where are you today?
Oh, I’m at my little spot where I make my lamps and stuff in New Orleans.
When you’re on the road doing shows, what’s on your rider as far as food and drinks and snacks?
Most of the time it’s Popeyes Chicken, full service. I got to have the rice, the red beans. I want mild chicken. I’m going to always have my chips, of course, the 400 Degreez Snack Chips. My main thing would be the Popeyes. I got to have the Popeyes.
Is that like a bucket of dark, white, a little bit of everything?
I get mixed. I get it mixed, so it’s a little bit of everything.
When you’re in the studio creating, are there certain foods or snacks or drinks that you need to have in the studio to get in the right mind state?
In the studio, I got to have my D’Usse or some form of cognac. I got to have some cognac in there, and I definitely got to have my Juvie Juice ’cause I’m blending them. We make drinks, we make all kinds of drinks with the Juvie Juice.
What about from a food perspective? Are you ordering takeout?
Usually, when I’m at home, I want crawfish, man. I’m tweaking for some crawfish right now. Most of the time when I go to the studio out of town it would be some form of seafood. So it might be like a grilled fish or something like that, nothing heavy.
How do you like your crawfish prepared?
Oh, they got to come from Cajun’s on Claiborne, on North Claiborne, first of all, ’cause they got a few Cajuns in the city. I got one specifically that I go to, right? My crawfish, they come one way, they hot.
They hot, they real seasoned up. It’s everything. You know what I’m saying? You really got to have a liking for them because they real hot.
So do you like your food spicy in general, or is it just the crawfish?
No, it’s just the crawfish. When we say spicy in New Orleans, we mean spicy, we don’t mean spicy by pepper spicy. We mean a lot of seasoning, like a lot of vegetables and a lot of onions and bell peppers and stuff like that.
It sounds like you have a lot of big meals, but are you much of a snacker? Do you eat chips and cookies and candy and stuff like that?
Yeah, not a lot. I used to. I used to be a Snickers man but now I’m getting up in age, man, I don’t do too much junk (food), like I used to. But if I was to dive into some snacks, I like ice cream sandwiches.
What’s your go-to ice cream sandwich?
Strawberry Oreo Ice Cream Sandwich from, what’s the name of the ice cream place? I can’t think of the name right off the top of my head. I just walk in a damn store every other day and buy something. Why I can’t think of it? I got a big dude in here (who) can’t think of an ice cream place. Baskin? That’s it, Baskin-Robbins. Yeah, Baskin-Robbins.
Do you prefer sweets to chips and savory snacks?
I’m really a potato chip guy. I’ll be eating them Kettle Chips. I get the Kettle Chips from Whole Foods. I like Lay’s Kettle Chips. My brand, I’m a Kettle Chip head, and I’ll try some shit too when it’s Kettle Chips, honestly. I like the crunch.
They got the Zapp’s down in New Orleans.
Yeah. That’s the main reason I like Kettle Chips. I like all the Zapp’s, even though some of them are horrible, but I still eat them.
What’s the worst flavor of Zapp’s?
Probably the crawfish flavor, but I still eat them. If you give me a bag, I’m still going to eat them.
You’re a crawfish guy, how come you don’t like the crawfish chips?
It ain’t the consistency I’m looking for, but I ain’t trying to hear it on Zapp’s either because they got some good chips.
When you’re on the road and you’re touring, what’s something that you like to have in your room or if there’s something in the mini bar?
I get into the mini bar, I do. You know those Nature’s Own snacks in the green pack? I like those, bro. I ain’t going to lie to you. I like those. I’m hooked on those. If they got those in the hotel room anywhere, usually I’ll eat them. I used to be a Toblerone man. I’m telling you, man, I used to have it bad with that. I had to leave that alone.
A lot of people have that problem.
You look like a Toblerone guy too! Especially in the hotel rooms ’cause they usually always have them in the minibars and stuff. That’s a fact. So after you’re done a show, I know- also, Famous Amos Cookies. I knew I was forgetting something. Famous Amos Cookies, I love those.
So after you have a show, I know it’s usually probably pretty late at night once you’re done. Do you usually go out to eat afterwards? Are you getting room service?
If I eat it’s going to be Waffle House, probably some eggs, grilled chicken. Whatever’s open 24 hours, usually late, I want eggs. I want some eggs and grilled chicken most of the time.
So you’re not doing room service?
If it’s open, and I can convince them to make what I want. I’m real talkative when I want some food, and I want something, I be, “Hey, this Juvie.” That’s when I start throwing the Juvie card around. “That’s Juvie, y’all. You know this Juvie, right?” “I’m going to tip you real good. Hey, could you get the chef to make me some eggs? You know what I’m saying? Some turkey sausage or something like that, man, just hook me up something special,” ’cause usually, they have pork on the menu for breakfast.
I’m not a pork eater, so I always have to ask these extra questions.
So it sounds like as you’re getting older, you’ve gotten a little bit healthier in your eating habits. You said you go to Whole Foods, you’re eating turkey sausage and it sounds like you might-
Nah, nah, I got to learn how, I’m trying. I’m trying, ’cause look, I got a stomach, bro. I’m trying to learn how.
Besides the granola bars, what’s some other healthy snacks that you like that maybe other people should know about that are trying to get healthier too?
Well, I’m a salad head. But as far as snack wise, healthy snacks, fruits, that’s probably it. I eat a lot of fruits too.
Do you have a favorite fruit? Favorite salad?
My favorite fruit is orange. I love oranges, mandarins or anything like that.
What’s your go-to salad when you’re eating salads or eating healthy?
I’m a Caesar head. I like Caesar. I like Caesar. I can eat it with chicken without chicken, just the Caesar.
So something that’s interesting that’s come up to us is that lot of times nowadays people are trying out new snacks and putting different snacks together. We had somebody that likes to eat Oreos and Doritos together. We had somebody that likes to eat Kool-Aid flavored pickles. I’m curious if there’s anything that you like that other people might think is weird or gross.
Yeah, pretzels and Snickers. I like pretzels with Snickers together. You know, the little Snickers? The little Snickers in the little pack… and pretzels. Try that.
That sounds good, actually.
Try that. Try that, brother.
Then on the flip side, is there anything that you see other people out there eating that you’re like, “That’s nasty?” Or, “Why would you eat that together?”
It’s been some weird stuff, man. I done seen people put peppermints in hot pickles, take a peppermint and stuff it into hot pickles.
Yeah, man, like, what’s the purpose? Your breath, it’s not going to help. I don’t know, but people have some weird fetish. The weirdest stuff I done seen probably came from pregnant women. I think that was my aunt or somebody was eating pig lips. What they eat it with? Pig lips and potato chips, pig feets and potato chips. You ever had that?
No.
Down here they have pickled pig lips. Pickled pig lips and potato chips.
That sounds like a band name or something. That’s interesting.
Pickled pig lips and potato chips, that’s big down here.
I’ll take your word for it. I might have to try that on my next trip.
So that brings me to New Orleans. You come from somewhere that has a very rich food history, a very rich culinary background. What are some of your favorite restaurants or places that the tourists don’t get to that they should be checking out?
Well, Neyow’s would be one of them, a local spot that a lot of people do come through that know about it, but a lot of the tourists miss it. It’s a spot I eat at on a regular. We got a lot of trucks down here that’s real good.
What are you eating at Neyow’s that’s really good?
I like the gumbo and the fried chicken, but I’ve had the fish, I’ve had the salmon. They got different stuff on their menu, man. They got a big menu. It’s always packed in there, but I don’t know if there’s people from out of town. I think it’s locals.
What’s another local spot that everybody should check out that maybe they don’t know about?
Definitely my guy, Skip, got Chicken & Watermelon. Everybody from out of town comes there. It is right there on Claiborne Street.
So would you say that Neyow’s is the best place to get gumbo or where’s your gumbo spot?
No, I think it’s called Orleans Cafe is another spot that’s in the New Orleans East that all they sell is gumbo, and they sell it by the gallons.
Oh, wow.
People say they have the best gumbo. I’ve had it one time, but I got to have it a couple of times. My taste buds don’t work like that. I got to have it a couple times to say if it’s the best or just have both of them together and compare them. But nah, Neyow’s have some good gumbo.
Then I know you said crawfish is your favorite local dish.
Nah, that’s number one, but we got Ruth’s Chris. Ruth’s Chris is from here. I always tell people from out of town like Ruth’s Chris is different in New Orleans. It’s not like the Ruth’s Chris you go to on the road or something like that.
So what makes it different in New Orleans, if you could explain?
I guess that base of the way they cook the steaks and cook the food and the know-how, you know what I’m saying? New Orleans is the cooking capital, so people in New Orleans tend to do things different, the chefs and all. So the cooks that they have that’s in the Ruth’s Chris down here will be totally different from the ones out of town. Even though they’re cooking the same thing.
When you’ve been on the road touring, are there any cities that you really look forward to ’cause of the food there or restaurants that you like to go to?
I’m big on going to spots that we don’t have here in New Orleans, but most of the time, it’s national spots. We don’t have a Benihana here, and I love Benihana. Every time I go to Dallas or I go to Atlanta or to New York, those are the spots that I look for. But New Orleans people, we so locked in on our food, when we go to another city, we like the people to tell us what’s the best spot and go there. I’ve been to a lot of spots, it’s just hard for me to just pull one out of my hat.
What do you like to order at Benihana, though?
Man, I be ordering damn near everything on the menu. We just order. I go for it. I go for it, man. I like the pageantry and everything, but usually I get the triple, the one with the chicken, the steak and the shrimp. Forgot what they call it. I don’t eat it all, but I just order it like that.
I want to get more into your snacks and products. So I heard that Juvie Juice was inspired by your love for Arnold Palmer. When did you get into the Arnold Palmers, and where did that come from?
I’ve been drinking that since a kid. We always took lemonade and mixed it with tea, and I never knew the name was Arnold Palmer until I got older. So when they started saying Arnold Palmer, especially when you’re going to bars or restaurants and you’re trying to make that order, it’s just easier to say that ’cause they know everybody knows what that is. But yeah, I just love the taste. Seltzer was something that I wasn’t a fan of. I’m not really a big beer drinker either.
So it was something that I had to be convinced to like. So my guy Travis took me over to Urban South and we had a taste test, me, him and my wife.
We went through all these different flavors and stuff like that. I kept telling him, “Ah, this ain’t it. This ain’t it. This don’t taste like Arnold Palmer, I don’t like it.” Eventually, we got to the flavor. We got to the consistency that I like, and shit, right now, it’s doing good. I think a lot of people feel the same way I feel about seltzers. A lot of them are just dry and horrible.
So how does that feel for you to have something that you loved as a kid and now you have your own version on the market? You’ve been in the hip-hop game, you probably have had every honor and achievement in music, but having that outside of music, how does that feel?
Oh, it’s a good feeling, man. Tomorrow I’m doing a big in-store with Total Wine, Costco’s and Rouses, which is a local grocery store food chain down here, so I’m gradually growing a brand. To see a brand grow from one state to another state — right now, we’re in eight states — and do well and see the fans reaction when they drink it is great. Mmost of the people that come, they really haven’t drank the seltzer a day in their life. They’re getting introduced to something new and they really like it. For me, it’s a new world.
Then can you explain also how the CheeWees partnership came about?
Well, CheeWees is something that I’ve been eating since I was a kid down here. It’s a local company that’s been making these CheeWees before Cheetos. Actually, they sold the machine to Frito-Lay to make the Cheetos brand, so this brand’s been going… Down here, when you say Cheetos, we don’t say it, we say CheeWees. I call Cheetos CheeWees also, so it’s something that stuck with me and I saw an opportunity to have a partnership with somebody local and make a chip of my own, something that I really like, something that I enjoy with my face and my brand on it. I think it’s doing real good, man. The people down here, they love it.
So I have to ask you, what’s next? Because it seems like this food and culinary world is something you’re really embracing.
We got the hot sauce we working on right now. Matter of fact, I’ll show you. I already got some bottled up, but I don’t have the pictures. We working on the artwork right now,
I’ll have to ask them to maybe send me some info on it, and maybe you could send me a bottle when it’s ready. I would love to try it.
Yeah, I can. I got a trunk full of it right now. I got A-1, when I say A-1, I got steak sauce I’m working on. Well, we’ve already finished with the steak sauce, and we’ve already finished with marinades, so I got a list of marinades. I got two more flavors of the Juvie Juice coming out. One is strawberry lemonade, the other one is mango. I’m working on a coffee, which is called The Great Company with my wife.
Oh, man, you got an empire that’s coming.
Yeah, I’m working, bro. I’m working.
One last question. I know you got your own stuff and your own brands going, but if you could own or operate a franchise that exists already, like a restaurant or something like that is already out there, would it be Popeyes or would it be something else?
Man, you hit it on the nose, bro. It would be Popeyes or Chick-fil-A. I love Chick-fil-A. I wish they would open on Sundays, but I understand ’cause from a Chick-fil-A person that loves Chick-fil-A, it hurts me when they close on Sunday ’cause I love my grilled nuggets.
Grilled nuggets is your go-to at Chick-fil-A?
Grilled nuggets, and then we never talked about that yet, I’m a Chick-fil-a man. I got to have my Texas Pete Hot Sauce with my grilled nuggets, my 12 count.
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