Ted Cruz and pop culture references don’t mix too well. He once tweeted about Fight Club and received an immediate earful. He also weighed in on Watchmen in an inaccurate way, and lately, he’s had it in for the Barbie movie, of all things. This film has riled up Fox News as well because the conservative news network is seemingly irate about how the film (and specifically the Kenergy) is allegedly “emasculating men.”
For his part, though, Ted is steamed because of a quirkily drawn map that happens to show dashes in the South China Sea. Ted has been raging for days over what he believes is the movie’s communist propaganda, and he has trashed the movie’s “woke messaging.” He wasn’t content to let that be the final say, so Ted Cruz hopped over to Fox News for another dig at the Margot Robbie-starring fun flick.
Jesse Watters intro-ed Ted while declaring (to any Fox News viewers who haven’t been as obsessed as Ted with this story) that “[n]ine dashes signify Chinese ownership of the oceans, islands, and reefs. The Chinese believe they own the South China Sea, but they don’t.” The chyron shouted, “Ted Cruz Declares War On Barbie,” and Watters did ask, “Did you see the movie, or did you just see the stupid map?” Surprise, surprise: Ted has “not seen the movie, I have only seen the stupid map.”
Sen. Ted Cruz is on Fox News complaining that Barbie is Chinese propaganda. By his own admission, Cruz has not seen the film. pic.twitter.com/4BGZPOT4Vg
“As you just showed, the map is drawn in like crayons,” Ted continued. “It’s roughly a map of the world… right to the east of where China is are nine dashes. To anyone who’s not really focused on geopolitics, the lines don’t mean anything. What those lines indicate is the Communist Party of China puts out official maps with those nine dashes, and they are asserting sovereignty over the entire South China Sea.”
In response to Watters asking whether Ted thought Warner Bros. did this as a message to China, Ted agreed: “This is really designed for the eyes of the Chinese censors and they’re trying to kiss up to the Chinese Communist Party because they wanna make movie selling the movie in China.” And this is actually the same sort-of argument that Ted had made about Fight Club, so he’s definitely on brand here.
Yet Ted’s “War On Barbie” has resulted in much laughter on social media.
This is why nobody takes Fox News or the Republicans seriously.
Ted Cruz declares war on Barbie? Really? Cruz is a grown man who’s angry over a children’s movie. He should declare war on mass shootings or something productive. But no. He’s mad about Barbie. pic.twitter.com/P2ydNE7yLp
From Dr. Seuss to Big Bird to Barbie, Ted Cruz keeps taking an interest in the politics of pop culture. He also keeps embarrassing himself: https://t.co/qAIEA6f7CGhttps://t.co/Diqu7mbhFp
Imagine pretending to be outraged about the Barbie movie but remaining silent after Donald Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate praised the Chinese dictator and the way he’s ruling the people of China with “iron fist.”
Now, according to Bloomberg, Adidas and Kanye are locked in another legal dispute over the brand’s marketing fund for Yeezy, which is reportedly worth $100 million a year. According to court filings, Adidas says West “mishandled virtually all of the marketing funds” — using them for different purposes than they were intended. $50 million went to an account in Wyoming, while another $25 million went to Kanye’s JPMorgan Chase account in New York (which has since been closed by the bank in response to Kanye’s antisemitic comments). However, the money was transferred to a separate account for general Yeezy funds, which Adidas says violated the parties’ agreement.
Meanwhile, Kanye’s lawyers reiterate his accusation that Adidas stole Yeezy designs to make lower-priced shoes. According to the terms of the agreement, though, Adidas owns all the designs while Kanye licensed his name and likeness to Adidas. Adidas has requested for Ye’s accounts to be frozen to prevent him from moving the allegedly misappropriated $75 million, which Kanye said he used on Sunday Services. He says the traveling gospel choir performances cost around $50 million.
Unfortunately for Adidas, the account freeze was denied and the dispute is in private arbitration.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
Hijack asks a question that has been on all of our minds for over a decade now: What if we took 24, with its real-time running clock playing out over the course of a full season, but instead it was seven hours and with Idris Elba and on an airplane? Okay, maybe you weren’t asking that exact question for the last 10 years. But you probably are now. Which is okay, seeing as that’s basically what Hijack is. Look at us, solving little problems we didn’t even know existed. It’s not as dramatic as, say, thwarting terrorists in the skies, to choose an example at random, but still. Not too shabby.
What we have here is a spinoff of one show (Star Trek: Discovery) that was itself a prequel to another show (the original Star Trek), now in its second season. We are deep into the lore here. But that’s okay. It’s a fun little ride, good for both diehard fans of the franchise and newbies trying to dip their toes in a little. You could use a little galactic escape sometimes. We all can.
It’s the 16th season of It’s Always Sunny and if you’re not already endlessly in love with this gang of moronic miscreants and their low-rent misadventures I don’t know that you can be saved. For those who have fallen off a little over the years, though, please allow us to reassure you that the show is as good, chaotic, vile, silly, and subtly smart as ever, trading international hijinks in Ireland during part of last season for a back to basics approach. In just the first two episodes we’ve seen Mac, Charlie, Dee, Dennis, and Frank giving us a cliffs notes understanding of inflation and crypto (as only Always Sunny can), revelations about Charlie and Frank’s cramped apartment, a crazy family road trip, and a whole lot of casual gunplay. And that’s just the first two episodes. We can’t wait to see the rest.
Wilt Chamberlain was a fascinating man. He once scored 100 points in a single basketball game. He used to drive cross-country barefoot on a whim sometimes. He is alleged to have been a famously prodigious lover. It’s not necessarily a surprise that someone is making a docuseries about his life as much as it is that it took all of us this long to make it happen.
Warrior is back for a third season, still starring Andrew Koji as Ah Sahm and still set in 19th century San Francisco and still based on the writings of Bruce Lee, but now it’s on Max, which was previously known as HBO Max, after originally debuting on Cinemax back in 2019. There’s a lot going on here, most of it involving some usage of the letters m-a-x, but the bottom line remains the same: it’s a good show that’s full of action and cool fights scenes and sometimes that’s exactly what you need when it starts getting hot outside.
John Krasinski is back for another run as Jack Ryan, the Tom Clancy character who has been saving the world for the last 30 or 40 years, played by everyone from Harrison Ford to Chris Pine. Wendell Pierce is in there, too. It’s kind of wild to think about, really, this thing where Jim from The Office and Bunk from The Wire have been running around for a few seasons now saving the world on a show made by the same company that ships vitamins and kitchen utensils to your house in 48 hours. But it’s happening. The future is pretty weird!
In case the clip of Lee Pace battling a group of relentless assassins dressed only in his birthday suit wasn’t a big enough clue, this season of Foundation f*cks. And fights. What we’re trying to say is there’s a ton more action involved in the latest batch of episodes as the struggle to save a small swath of humanity from a predicted galactic war grows more perilous. We’ve hurtled 100 years forward as Dr. Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) and his group of revolutionaries encounter a new threat to his psychohistory equation while navigating the unintended consequences of time travel. Meanwhile, the Emperor clones (Pace among them) are scrambling to hold onto power as rebellions and political upheaval threaten their DNA-replicating dynasty. Man, no one is doing sci-fi like Apple TV+ right now.
Can the bleak freaky award-winning anthology series and buzz machine from a few years ago still scare the piss out of audiences now that the world has been brought closer to some of its popular themes about metaverses, AI everywhere, neural implants, evaporating privacy protections, and the malignancy of loneliness and hollowness of digital interactions? We’re about to find out with five new star-studded episodes that beg for our attention while it’s still ours to control.
What if Schitt’s Creek, but with ritual killings and space cults? That’s the basic idea driving Praise Petey, a new Hulu-streaming cartoon from Mike Judge, Greg Daniels, and SNL head writer Anna Drezen. Starring the voice of Schitt’s alum Annie Murphy, the show tells the story of a big city influencer who inherits a town from her father… and the weird cult at its core. Naturally, cultures clash when she decides to put her fancy shoed foot down and stop all the human sacrifices, but besides the ritual killings, everyone seems more quirky than nut-retractingly terrifying, so we’re sure these divergent sides can work out their differences before a comet comes to wipe us all out/save us.
Henry Cavill has one foot out the door of this franchise, which is unfortunate, but we’ll see what Liam Hemsworth brings to the table in the future. Further, this season will apparently bring us (from the looks of the above teaser) plenty of banger-filled Jaskier with newfound eyeliner. Ideally, this means that the show will go ahead and declare Jaskier canonically bisexual because they’ve been dancing around the issue long enough. And god only knows that the Netflix franchise has tweaked Andrzej Sapkowski books and the video games enough over the years already, so what’s one more time?
The first season of The Bear was often chaotic and intense in the very best of ways. But while season two doesn’t move fully away from that formula, it all feels a little more slow-burn and structured as it seeks to tell a story about what happens when you dare to take a chance and change things up. How discombobulating it is and how the universe reacts. We thought last season was a main course, but it was apparently just an appetizer.
Because bucketfuls of Taylor Sheridan TV shows still aren’t enough, the former Sons Of Anarchy cop is here with an inspired-by-real-life story about the CIA’s Lioness Program. Zoe Saldaña stars as an operative who helps mentor and mold recruits, who will one day become fearsome assassins. Saldaña is surely relieved to be back in ass-kicking mode, over a decade after Colombiana proved how riveting she can be as an action star. Nicole Kidman also headlines as the chief of the Lioness Program, which is part of the “CIA’s efforts to thwart the next 9/11,” according to the show’s synopsis.
Quarterback is Netflix’s next stab at a sports docuseries, after first diving into F1 racing and professional golf with surprising success. This one follows — you guessed it — a group of NFL quarterbacks as they prepare for battle in an NFL season. We get looks at everyone from Patrick Mahomes to Kirk Cousins to Marcus Mariota as they try to fling the pigskin successfully while getting chased by very large dudes. It’s basically an action movie.
We are fixing to be awash in Tim Olyphant. Not only is Justified: City Primeval on the way, but he also plays an apparently hatless role in this crime drama series from Steven Soderbergh. Olyphant and Clare Danes portray parents of a kidnapped child, so yes, this might not be the kind of “tense drama” that you’re craving, but the talent is stacked into the stratosphere. Zazie Beetz plays the lead investigator on the case, and naturally, do not expect a cut-and-dried story from Mr. Soderbergh. Yes, there are secrets afoot here.
They don’t make movies like They Cloned Tyrone anymore. Pulled from a Black List script from first-time director Juel Taylor, this slick, riotous crime caper is an amalgam of genres – one part mind-bending sci-fi, one part Blaxploitation homage, mixed with 70s era funk, infused with Nancy Drew references, and propped up by stellar comedic performances from Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris. John Boyega’s in here too, playing a reluctant hero tasked with saving his block from a secret government conspiracy that’s somehow twisted up in fried chicken recipes and grape drink offerings and hair relaxer. If we could have more of this, that’d be great.
The Afterparty was a ton of fun in its first season. It was a little whodunnit mystery with a cast full of your comedy favorites — Sam Richardson! Tiffany Haddish! Ben Schwartz! And so on! — and a fun hook where each episode focused on a different character and was presented using a different style of storytelling. Well, it’s back for a second season now, with a new murder and some new genres and a similar crew of characters. There is very little to complain about here.
Body-swaps. Pride parades. Mall outings. The best comedy on TV is officially back, baby. WWDITS’ latest season introduces our favorite group of undead idiots to even more 21st century hijinks proving that this show – unlike its immortal characters – only gets better with age. Guillermo’s struggling with an identity crisis of supernatural proportions, Nadja’s been hexed, Colin Robinson is thriving in the service industry, and Nandor and Laszlo are knee-deep in a centuries-old feud. The house is in chaos, which is just how we like it.
The super-rich mega-church proprietors are back and they’re ready to step into a new chapter that sees patriarch Eli Gemstone ceding control to his kids. Shades of Succession? In some surface ways, sure, but Gemstones is its own swirl of chaos and genius, and this new season goes all in on family feuds while adding monster trucks, romantic entanglements, backwoods survivalists doing that thing they do, and an all-new Baby Billy scheme.
Everyone’s favorite extralegal lawman is swaggering back into our hearts, long after he made it out of Harlan alive. Can he make it out of Detroit alive, too? We’ll see, and Raylan Givens’ daughter, Willa, is also onboard to give the hat a hard time because someone needs to do it. We’ve already pinpointed the one Justified episode, “Long In The Tooth,” that makes an ideal essential rewatch before this spinoff, and Raylan should have a swell time hunting bad guys in Motor City. At the top of his list: The so-called “Oklahoma Wildman,” portrayed by Boyd Holbrook and his tighty-whiteys.
Haim deal with a lot of bullsh*t. Last month, the trio delivered an invigorating performance at the Gov Ball music festival. However, under a video of them playing “My Song 5,” a person commented, “Is it me or is that bassist just acting?”
The band’s account replied: “Lol, I can’t believe this sh*t is still happening.” They posted a screenshot of the interaction on their Instagram Story, writing, “I’m so used to seeing this shit on every f*cking video of us playing ever, but I’m so over it. don’t ever say we don’t play our own f*cking instruments.”
In a new interview with NME, Danielle addressed the situation. “That video came up on my Instagram and I was like ‘Oh My God. that’s such a great video, wow!’” she said. “I think the thing that is really frustrating is… There will be amazing videos of us online playing our instruments really well and I’ll look at our comments [not that we sit and look at comments regularly] and I’ll just be shocked that people are still like ‘They’re not playing,’ ‘That’s not real,’ ‘They’re acting.’ It’s unbelievable.”
She continued, “It’s just really disappointing because that’s the thing we worked so fucking hard for our whole lives, you know.”
Alana added, “We have been a band for 16 years but we have also been a band since we were children. We were in a band with our parents and have been playing since we were kids, so to then be a band for 16 years and still have to prove ourselves… it never ends.”
“It’s like ‘You don’t play your instruments, you don’t write your songs, you’re not a real band,’” she said. “And it’s like, we’ve been here for 16 years and there’s no stopping yet.”
She added, “We’re gonna keep going until we can’t f*cking play anymore. So to be so proud of the work that we’ve done and then to see mostly men I mean, pretty much all men comment things that are not only just terrible about our looks but then on top of that, that we don’t f*cking play our instruments is insanity.”
Este said, “It’s one thing to talk about the way we look, we don’t care, whatever. But the way we play? I will go toe to toe with whoever, whatever band wants to go toe to toe with me. I know how to play.”
One of the biggest free agents in the world of sports right now is Shannon Sharpe. The Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee recently left Fox Sports and the morning debate show Undisputed, and now, there’s apparently a bit of a bidding war to try and acquire his services, according to Michael McCarthy and A.J. Perez of Front Office Sports.
Per their report, Sharpe has held conversations with ESPN about a role that would let him become one of the personalities who debate Stephen A. Smith on First Take, while allowing him to pursue other interests in the world of sports media. And while they made clear that nothing is done between Sharpe and the Worldwide Leader, it sure seems like Smith and Sharpe are cooking something up, as Smith quote tweeted the report and and made clear that he will “all the things I need to address” on his podcast.
Look for me on Friday, Folks! I’ll be addressing all the things I need to address. Back on “The Stephen A. Smith Show” podcast on Friday — then LIVE on @FirstTake Monday morning. See y’all in a minute. Buckle Up!!! https://t.co/w4wHgLbUWQ
Smith has expressed that Sharpe would be welcome on First Take if that was the move he wanted to make after he left Fox. The catch is that Smith wouldn’t want Sharpe to have the same role that he had on Undisputed where he was a permanent co-host who debated Skip Bayless — Smith’s former full-time partner on First Take — every day. Instead, Smith would want him to be one of the show’s contributors, which indeed appears to be the arrangement that Sharpe would pursue here.
The Justified: City Primeval Roundup is a weekly recap feature where we take the various people, places, and things from the new limited series and score them on a scale from one to five cowboy hats. We play fast and loose with the rules here, similar to the way Raylan Givens handles an investigation. A real loose cannon situation over here.
EPISODE TWO — “THE OKLAHOMA WILDMAN”
UPROXX
Tighty whiteys
FX
There are lots of ways to tell Clement Mansell is a bad dude. There’s all the murders we’ve seen him commit, for one, which is a pretty good tip-off. There’s the thing where he showed up at Raylan’s hotel and invited his daughter to dinner. There’s the general look of wild-eyed menace on his face all the time, no matter what he’s doing, which is a really nice piece of acting work by Boyd Holbrook. But there’s also the underpants.
I am just generally distrustful of people who wear tighty-whiteys, especially like this, just lounging around during the day. It’s suspicious. Yes, sure, the thing where one of his hands has a gun in it and he appears to be scratching his crotch with the barrel of it doesn’t help either, but still. The fact that they’re not that comfortable is like fourth on the list of my issues with them. It’s a really nice touch by the wardrobe department to put a serial killing maniac in them like this. Really drives it home.
Okay, think about it this way: Imagine you knock on someone’s door and they answer it in nothing but these little briefs. Now imagine you knock on someone’s door and they answer it in boxers. Which person creeps you out more? No contest, right?
Case closed.
Dunking your foot in the toilet
FX
Oh, Sandy. Just piling bad decisions on top of each other, stacking them real, real high. High enough that she probably should have climbed up the pile of bad choices to hide that gun in Sweety’s ceiling instead of hopping up on the toilet in heels. Now she’s got a broken shoe and a wet foot and neither of those are in the top ten of her problems. We’ll do some more on this subject later.
The only silver lining here is that she wasn’t wearing sneakers. Breaking the heel and ruining the nice shoes isn’t great either but, as anyone who has stepped in a deep puddle or plunked a foot into a toilet while wearing, like Air Max’s can attest, sloshing around all day with a wet shoe and sock is a miserable experience. Sandy doesn’t need to add all that to her list.
UPROXX
Clement Mansell
FX
Things we learned about Clement Mansell in the second episode:
He and Sweety have worked together for a while, including one drug dealer stickup that resulted in multiple dead bodies
Carolyn is his lawyer but she may not like that very much
He has an energy not entirely dissimilar to the Joker where he is fascinated by the news coverage of his actions and he is willing to let someone beat the hell out of him if it helps him make a chaotic chess move or two
Again, very different from the Raylan-Boyd relationship in a very interesting way. He makes Raylan a little nutso. That’s a recipe for fun. I mean, for us. Raylan… not so much.
My stupid brain
FX
Follow me here…
We learned that the original arresting officer in the old Mansell case was named Raymond Cruz…
Raymond Cruz is played by Paul Calderon, who also played a police detective on Bosch…
Raymond Cruz is also the name of the real-life actor who played Tuco Salamanca on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul…
And all of that had me so distracted and twisted into a little brain pretzel that I had to go back and rewind the show because I realized I had stopped paying attention for like five minutes.
It’s fine.
UPROXX
Raylan Givens
FX
It’s interesting to see Raylan in Protective Dad Mode like this. It’s not that we’ve never seen him paint outside the lines a little bit. He loves to do that. But this was one of those rare times where he did so out of rage, just black-eyed fury over someone putting his daughter in danger. It’s going to get him in a different kind of trouble, too. He’s used to the whole “I don’t like your methods but you get the job done” speech. He’s gotten that one probably 1000 times. I don’t know how often he’s gotten the “please don’t beat the hell out of a murder suspect with your bare hands in front of a hotel and a few dozen eyewitnesses” speech, though. I suspect he’ll enjoy that one less.
He still does have that Spidey Sense, though, the one that told him Mansell was in the hotel while they were talking to Sandy, and the one that told him Carolyn might not enjoy representing Mansell all that much. It’s fun to see him work. It’s really fun to watch him trade words with his adversaries. Those fists could be a problem, though.
Sandy Stanton
FX
Sandy has:
A broken heel and a wet foot
A boss at the casino who is tired of her tardiness
A gun that killed a judge hidden in a bathroom
A detective and a U.S. Marshal following her around a lot
A cold
It’s not great.
Sweety
FX
I kind of love Sweety. Every city needs one failed musician who almost made it big and now runs a little bar with a mostly criminal clientele and guns hidden all over the place and who sells bags of weeds to blond casino hostesses between pouring two fingers of bourbon to guys who are either going to or coming from a bank robbery. I need him to be okay.
UPROXX
Carolyn Wilder
FX
Carolyn and Raylan continue to make little smoldering eyes at each other while they’re sparring with their words over whether and/or how much he should back off of her and/or her demonic clients. That’s fun. I like this for Raylan. Less so for Carolyn because, like, Raylan does not have a great history in the love department, at least as far as choosing suitable mates, and as far as the ones he does get tangled up with later getting kidnapped or placed in harm’s way. Carolyn seems like she can handle herself, though. We still like her so far. I want to see her put on Raylan’s hat at some point.
Willa Givens
FX
Listen, Raylan deserves this. Years of tormenting various authority figures in his own life by bending or ignoring the rules, years of wisecracks and smirks, all coming back to him in the form of a teenage girl who is not impressed at all by his badge and hat.
It’ll be interesting where things go from here, though, now that she knows Mansell used her as a threat and she was at a dinner table with a maniac. I suspect it will not deter her very much. She might not be running around hustling Rolex hustlers and strolling through dilapidated warehouses as much, but that rebellious Givens blood is still rushing through her veins.
Criminals who have lots of knowledge about ancient Egyptian deities
FX
Very few things I love more than criminals who know kind of a lot about history or mythology and use it in a little monologue to fill in backstory about another character or event. I should start doing this stuff. Like, when I’m at Wawa ordering a sandwich and they tell me they’re out of some ingredient, instead of saying “ahhhh nuts” like I usually do, I take a deep breath and launch into a soliloquy about Washington and his troops being short on supplies at Valley Forge, too, but making it work anyway.
I suspect people would hate it a lot.
UPROXX
Wendell Robinson
FXFX
Love this guy so far.
Little callbacks
FX
Back in the first episode, when the cops were talking about tracking down whoever killed the judge, they said they wanted to be sure they arrested the person in his bed before he had a chance to run.
In the flashback to Mansell’s arrest, he was picked up… sitting in his bed.
I don’t know if that was intentional but I did enjoy it a lot.
Chicken fingers
FX
From Wikipedia:
Chicken fingers (also known as chicken goujons, chicken strips, chicken tenders, chicken nuggets or chicken fillets) are chicken meat prepared from the pectoralis minor muscles of the animal. These strips of white meat are located on either side of the breastbone, under the breast meat (pectoralis major). They may also be made with similarly shaped pieces cut from chicken meat, usually the breast, or sometimes just pulverized chicken flesh.
Chicken tenders were first made in Manchester, New Hampshire at the Puritan Backroom in 1974. Restaurants in Savannah, Georgia, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana have challenged this claim with later assertions to the invention of chicken tenders, although the general consensus supports the claim in Manchester.
Brian Kilmeade made a strange comment as the Fox & Friends crew tackled Robert F. Kennedy Jr. challenging Joe Biden in the Democratic primary. Thanks to RFK Jr.’s well-documented history of controversial viewpoints, the candidate has not been embraced by Democratic voters. That dynamic has flabbergasted Kilmeade, who somehow in the year 2023, still thinks the Democratic Party is duty-bound to love the Kennedy family.
Here’s what Kilmeade had to say about RFK Jr. while also making a point to talk up the candidate who is doing Republicans a favor by attempting to weaken Biden:
Fox’s Brian Kilmeade: RFK Jr. “does his homework, is extremely bright… Can you believe we are at a day when the Democrats are calling a Kennedy disparaging names?”
Then the group laughs at a Democratic strategist who called him “a Republican.” pic.twitter.com/Z8ktJmhekw
“The problem with dueling with RFK Jr., he does his homework, is extremely bright, and you better bring your A-game,” Kilmeade said. “And, also, can you believe we are at a day when the Democrats are calling a Kennedy disparaging names? What country are we in?”
However, as always, Steve Doocy swooped in to fact check Kilmeade with a dose of reality.
“There are Kennedy family members who disagree with him as well,” Doocy argued. “‘We love him, but he’s wrong about that.’”
As for the things that RFK Jr. is wrong about, where to begin? All throughout the COVID pandemic, he pushed anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, earning him the scorn of his own wife, Curb Your Enthusiam star Cheryl Hines. He’s also repeated Russian state TV talking points and openly accused America of being responsible for Putin invading the Ukraine.
More recently, RFK Jr. landed in hot water after he claimed that COVID is a “bioweapon” that was “ethnically targeted” to not infect Jewish people or the Chinese. He was roundly criticized for dabbling in what is clearly an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Stormzy hit up Wimbledon last weekend, but “The Weekend,” his new single with RAYE, is much a less formal affair.
“The Weekend” arrived on Wednesday, July 19, as the payoff to Stormzy’s Instagram breadcrumbs. It’s Stormzy’s third single since late June, following “Toxic Trait” featuring Fredo and “Longevity Flow,” and showcases a continued emotional evolution since his intimately vulnerable November 2022 album, This Is What I Mean.
The Omar Jones-directed video captures an unlikely meeting that turns into an adrenaline-inducing romance reserved for the weekends through the London-area artists’ dueling perspectives.
RAYE sings of meeting a man during a night out, “I took his number before I left / All night long he was on my mind / So I sent him a text that said / ‘Call me.’” She’s intrigued, but she has boundaries and stipulations (“‘Cause I’m workin’ all week, Monday to Friday / Let’s stay on the weekend”).
Stormzy isn’t deterred in his pursuit of a woman so beautiful she’s like “an artifact.” He asks if she’s available Monday. Nope. “Aight, Tuesday I’ll slide,” he raps, but RAYE is busy. “Is Wednesday cool?” he asks. Of course, RAYE works late on Wednesdays. You can probably guess where this is going: They can finally make time for each other come Friday.
“I’ma come through at the end of the week / Turn a real good girl into a freak,” Stormzy boasts in an effortless flow.
The free-spirited undertone is reminiscent of RAYE’s monster 2022 hit with 070 Shake, “Escapism,” which cracked No. 1 on the UK Official Singles Chart and peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 this January.
“I think as a woman when you’re processing such things in life, there are not really any healthy outlets for it,” RAYE told Uproxx of the song. “I think women do stereotypically face a lot of pressure to seem like they’ve got everything together — to be polite, to be smiley, to be kind, and grateful, and all of this stuff. So I wanted to create a story that was very blunt and honest about that time in my life.”
Late in the movie, after Ken (played by Ryan Gosling) takes over Barbie Land and turns Barbie’s Dreamhouse into Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House, Barbie (Margot Robbie) hatches a plan with her fellow Barbies to return things to the way they were. (It’s impossible to discuss this movie and not say the word “Barbie” 7,000 times.) The scheme involves having all the Kens serenade their Barbies with an acoustic version of “Push” by Matchbox Twenty.
It may have seemed that Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach were making fun of Rob Thomas & Co. for their post-grunge angsty anthem, which was released when they were still “Matchbox 20” (this is important to me, a guy whose first email address referenced “Back 2 Good”). But that’s not the case.
“I will say there were many notes, many notes sessions on all fronts, but the thing is that anything that have in a movie, any reference — and we reference The Godfather, Matchbox Twenty, Dave Matthews Band — I love all of it,” Gerwig told IndieWire. “I never put anything in a movie I don’t love, and that’s true. I don’t really have use for things that I don’t have affection for, within a movie. That was the core of it.”
What ’90s song will Gerwig deconstruct next? My money’s on Everclear’s “Santa Monica.”
Earlier this week, Las Vegas Police told TMZ they’d served a search warrant at a home in Henderson, Nevada in connection with the long-dormant Tupac Shakur murder case. The past few days have brought more details; it was reported that the home in question was potentially linked to a man who was suspected of being the one to shoot Tupac in 1996. Now, TMZ has acquired footage of the incident at the home, which saw a SWAT team busting into the home at around 10 PM.
It still remains to be seen what evidence police were searching for at the home or whether they found it. The home is owned by Paula Clemons, the wife of Keefe D., a man who claims to be the uncle of Orlando Anderson. Anderson and Keefe were jumped by Tupac and his crew at the MGM Grand the night of September 7, 1996; later, Tupac was shot to death in a drive-by on the Las Vegas Strip. Anderson was posited as the perpetrator as it was thought he wanted revenge for the earlier beatdown.
In 1998, Los Angeles Sheriffs recovered a gun at a home in Compton they believed belonged to one of the Southside Compton Crips who was in Las Vegas at the time; meanwhile, Clemons was found to have owned a home in Compton around the same time. Of course, until the police reveal more, it would be irresponsible to speculate. We’ll see if the investigation leads to answers in the nearly 30-year-old case.
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(@IrishMsKelly) July 20, 2023
(@AzPetrich) July 20, 2023
