GoneTrending

As the former White House press secretary to Donald Trump, current Fox News personality Kayleigh McEnany was a prominent fixture in the former president’s administration. So, it’s notable that McEnany refused to entertain accusations that the cocaine found at the White House belongs to Hunter Biden, who’s been the target of several jokes from right-wing figures since the scandal broke.

While appearing on Fox & Friends on Thursday morning, McEnany pulled from her White House experience to explain to viewers how the cocaine was most likely found and why Hunter isn’t a potential suspect.

Via Mediaite:

She explained that the area is “heavily trafficked” and that the cocaine was likely “discovered rather quickly” because Secret Service officers watch the area.

“So it couldn’t have been there for days and days,” McEnany said. “It had have been there for — I would say — minutes before someone took notice.”

Considering the narcotics were most likely found quickly after the holiday weekend and in an area trafficked by visitors, McEnany said that’s enough evidence to let Hunter off the hook.

“For it to be Hunter Biden, he left on Friday, he was at Camp David. There’s no way,” McEnany said. “It’s inconceivable to think cocaine could sit for a 72-hour period, so I would rule him out at this point.”

Of course, McEnany’s stance is the complete opposite of her old boss. Trump has not only alleged that the cocaine belongs to Hunter, but he also said it belongs to President Joe Biden, too. Oh, and he also called Jack Smith a “crackhead.” Because it’s always a great idea to publicly insult the special counsel who’s already indicted for you mishandling classified documents and is still investigating your involvement in the January 6 attack. That should end well.

(Via Mediaite)

Audible has something great going on with its new series, Breakthrough. Breakthrough takes the popular idea of a singing competition show and brings it to the audio-only format for the first time ever, letting artists’ voices and personalities shine brighter than anything else. The two-part finale debuted recently, so if you’re only just hearing about Breakthrough, you can go binge the whole thing now. (Read our introduction to the series before you do that, though.)

The audio-series featured five contestants, among them being Sasha McVeigh, a British singer who moved to Nashville to break into the country music industry. About a week after her Breakthrough season wrapped up, she dropped her first single since the show, “Black Label.” Furthermore, she’s just performed it for The Eye.

The Eye is our performance series in which up-and-coming artists take to an intimate studio space to deliver a rendition of a song in one take, with just one camera and one microphone. For her turn in the studio, McVeigh gave a charismatic performance of her country-rock stomper, in which she’s feeling self-assured about her backroad-friendly lifestyle.

The track starts, “Got an SUV, circa ’96 / My guy’s in the shotgun ’cause he don’t drive stick / Not trying to get hitched: I drive one / Not trying to get rich, but I get it done.” McVeigh delivers those lines and subsequent ones with a swagger and confidence that make it easy to see why she was given a shot on Breakthrough.

Watch McVeigh’s The Eye performance of “Black Label” above.

“It’s always beautiful to see musicians continuously find new ways to bring their artistry to life with each project they release,” Uproxx’s Wongo Okon wrote about 6lack’s March album, Since I Have A Lover. 6lack took that personally, as he teamed with the Berlin-based AI sound wellness company Endel to create a new function for Since I Have A Lover that nobody saw coming.

Last week, 6lack took to Instagram to tease his and Endel’s collaborative “Sounds For Slowing Down” series, including “an ethereal listening experience of my new sleep soundscape” on Thursday, July 6, and Friday, July 7. The sessions will be hosted in-person in Berlin and Los Angeles, as well as within the app.

Per press release, two soundscapes were created from Since I Have A Lover using “scientifically validated AI technology rooted in extensive neuroscience research” with the intent “to help people sleep and focus better.”

“This is about letting people experience my music in a new way,” 6lack said in a statement. “These sounds can be for rest and relaxation, or for helping you feel inspired and creative. It’s for finding a sense of balance in life. Since I Have A Lover has plenty of magical sounds, and combined with Endel’s AI and science, it was easy to create something that felt healing.”

“SIHAL (Endel Sleep Soundscape)” and “SIHAL (Endel Lo-fi Soundscape)” will release on all streaming platforms on July 8 and July 24, respectively. The partnership is described as an extension of 6lack’s mental health advocacy, purposefully occurring during BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month.

These soundscapes could come in handy for 6lack during his upcoming Since I Have A Lover Tour, beginning this October.

Listen to snippets below.

Avid fans of Casey McQuiston’s bestselling novel, Red, White & Royal Blue, will be thrilled to see the gay love story come to onscreen life in this Amazon Prime Video trailer. The plot revolves around the first female U.S. president’s son, Alex Claremont-Diaz (Zakhar Perez), falling in love with a British prince, Henry (Nicholas Galitzine). The two begin as annoyances to each other, but that attitude changes. And as one would expect, they are eventually devastated at the thought that their budding love can never be, due to their various duties to country. Cue the drama, but more than that, dig into that deep-fried accent from Uma Thurman as President Ellen Claremont.

C’mon. I mean sure, the two male stars of this movie will be quite familiar to the streaming audience who favors romance stories (The Kissing Booth, Purple Hearts), and Galitzine told PEOPLE that he’s thrilled to star in a story with a “built-in fan base straight from the beginning.” Yet no one can ignore Uma diving right into her role and really going for it with that voice. If you’re one who enjoyed Joelle Carter’s arguably overdone Justified accent [raises hand], then you will adore what Uma appears to be doing in this trailer.

As one Twitter user put things, she “sounds like Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Bring it on, lady.

Amazon’s Red, White & Royal Blue streams on August 11.

For years, TikTok has been one of the main places for music discovery online, from launching the careers of artists like Lil Nas X and Ice Spice to resurfacing years-old hits and driving them to new peaks on the Billboard charts. But now, TikTok wants to be the place where users actually listen to the songs they find through trending sounds and friends’ viral videos. According to Variety, the sometimes controversial company has launched its own “social music streaming service” with music licensed from the “Big Three.”

However, stateside music fans may have to wait a while to get to use it; for now, the new service is only live in Brazil and Indonesia as a premium-only service (this is likely a test to see how it’ll do in markets that are still relatively small but significantly-sized to provide insight into how the service will perform here). Users will be able to sync with their existing accounts to download or share tracks they discover on TikTok. Presumably, if it’s a hit overseas, it’ll only be a matter of time until it’s incorporated into other markets.

Ole Obermann, global head of music business development at TikTok, said in a statement, “We are excited about the opportunities TikTok Music presents for both music fans and artists, and the great potential it has for driving significant value to the music industry.”

Carly Rae Jepsen is back. Last year, she shared her new album The Loneliest Time, which, despite its title, was a ball. Last month, she released the song “Shy Boy,” and now she announced her new album, The Loveliest Time.

In an Instagram post, the singer wrote a touching caption about the record, telling fans to “let the countdown begin.” Unfortunately, no release date has been provided. She explained it was originally meant to be a B-sides album, but ended up becoming “completed set to a body of work.”

Read what she wrote and check out her post below.

“It’s been the loneliest time, it’s been the loveliest time.
After a season of hibernation comes the season of blossoming. I got to know loneliness and discover the beauty in it. The loneliest time taught me that growth comes from being planted in darkness. But now the world has opened itself back up again and in turn so have we. It’s time for celebration and for all the lessons we have learned to burst into joyful action. The Loveliest Time…

At this point you know me so well that I won’t even tease about a b sides. It’s almost disrespectful because you know that it’s coming. And in fact this is the time to announce that it’s here. It’s done and a month from now The Loveliest Time will be all yours. I can’t really call it a b sides as if these were cast off ideas – it’s the completed set to a body of work that taught me so much about love and loneliness and myself.

So let the countdown begin. Thank you for your continued support. Always x

Carly.”

Every second has felt like an hour for Swifties since early May when Taylor Swift confirmed her re-recorded Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) album during one of her The Eras Tour shows in Nashville.

Swift is preparing to stage back-to-back The Eras Tour concerts at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri on Friday, July 7, and Saturday, July 8, and she’s bringing a one-of-one souvenir. We’re only hours away from the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) at 9 p.m. PST and midnight EST.

Speak Now originally arrived in October 2010 as her third LP, and Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is the third of her re-recorded albums. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) preceded it in April 2021 and November 2021, respectively. Both of those albums debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It’s probably the safest assumption imaginable that Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) will become Swift’s 12th career No. 1 album — the most recent one being last October’s Midnights.

Swift leveled with her fans before they collectively revisit her Speak Now era while performing at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota in late June, seemingly trying to preempt any online harassment that might be headed John Mayer’s way after “Dear John” reenters the mainstream.

“I’m putting this album out because I want to own my music, and I believe that any artist who has the desire to own their music should be able to. That’s why I’m putting out this album,” she said, in part. “I’m 33 years old. I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19, except the songs I wrote and the memories we made together. So what I’m trying to tell you is I’m not putting this album out so you can go and should feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about.”

On Wednesday, July 5, Swift also announced 14 additional international The Eras Tour dates for 2024 with Paramore serving as her opener. See those dates here.

Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is out 7/7 via Republic. Find more information here.

Paramore is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Much has changed since Drake last headlined a North American tour in 2018. For example, concertgoers have a new favorite activity that’s strange, at best, and harmful, at worst: Throwing stuff at artists on stage.

Drake opened his and 21 Savage’s It’s All A Blur Tour at Chicago’s United Center on Wednesday night, July 5. The setlist spanned 50-plus songs, meaning Drake had to spend a lot of time on stage — enough time for someone to inexplicably launch a phone in his direction.

A TikTok posted by Jordyn Taylor shows Drake singing Ginuwine’s “So Anxious” when a phone grazes his arm. He looks at it confusedly but doesn’t stop singing. Off camera, people can be heard asking, “What was that?” Someone else yells, “A phone!” Taylor wrote, “Someone threw a phone at papi” atop the TikTok.

It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in a set full of spectacle including a larger-than-life Virgil Abloh statue and a younger version of Drake that might or might be a hologram.

According to several fan accounts, Drake also assured fans he has “an album coming out soon,” which is presumably the For All The Dogs album he previously teased around the release of his poetry book a few weeks ago.

Drake and Savage’s It’s All A Blur Tour will return to United Center on Thursday night, July 6. See all of the dates here.

The era of popular, prestigious miniseries has been a gift for fans who would love to see a beloved book adapted but don’t want it smushed into a movie’s feeble runtime. Now, fans of Holly Ringland’s wildly popular novel can rejoice at seeing a stellar cast bring that harrowing story to life.

Here’s the official synopsis:

“When Alice, aged 9, tragically loses her parents in a mysterious fire, she is taken to live with her grandmother June at Thornfield flower farm, where she learns that there are secrets within secrets about her and her family’s past. Set against Australia’s breathtaking natural landscape, and with native wildflowers and plants providing a way to express the inexpressible, this enthralling family drama spans decades. As she grows from her complicated past, Alice’s journey builds to an emotional climax when she finds herself fighting for her life against a man she loves. Sigourney Weaver stars as June Hart, Asher Keddie as Sally Morgan, Leah Purcell as Twig North, Frankie Adams as Candy Blue, and Alycia Debnam-Carey as Alice Hart.”

No surprise that it’s from the producers of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers. The trailer is giving off the same kind of moody drama vibes.

Plus, there must be an interesting crossover between fans of the novel and fans of women kicking ass in space because Weaver and Adams have got PhDs in intergalactic beatdowns.

The first three episodes land on Prime Video August 4th, with a new episode coming out each week until the finale on September 1st.

The Portland Trail Blazers will keep Matisse Thybulle around going forward. On Wednesday, Thybulle agreed to an offer sheet with the Dallas Mavericks that would pay him $33 million over the next three seasons, and because Thybulle was a restricted free agent, the Blazers had two days to make a decision on whether or not they’d match it and bring him back.

One day later and Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports that Portland will, indeed, match the offer and keep Thybulle around its core of young, talented guards.

It’s not a huge surprise that the Blazers would want to keep Thybulle, whose defensive versatility is an excellent fit alongside the Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, and Anfernee Simons. Add in the fact that he was a pretty solid three-point shooter when he got to Portland last year — he connected on 38.8 percent of his attempts and 41.5 percent of his corner threes — and this is a sensible bet for Portland to make.

As for the Mavericks, they were able to find a three-and-D option that can slot alongside Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving elsewhere in the restricted free agency market. It was reported on Wednesday night that the team was part of a three-team trade with the Boston Celtics that saw them land Grant Williams, who will join the Mavs on a 4-year, $53 million deal.