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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.

Not long after, Sharpe QT’d Smith and used a whole lot of popcorn emojis in his response.

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”

Tighty whiteys

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

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.

Clement Mansell

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

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.

Raylan Givens

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

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

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.

Carolyn Wilder

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

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

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.

Wendell Robinson

Love this guy so far.

Little callbacks

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

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.

We are learning so much today.

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:

“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.

(Via Matthew Gertz on Twitter)

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.”

Watch the “The Weekend” video above.

[Warning: this post contains spoilers for Barbie]

Lady Bird was a younger generation’s introduction to Dave Matthews Band. Will Greta Gerwig’s new film, Barbie, do the same thing for Matchbox Twenty?

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.”

(Via IndieWire)

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.

Britney Spears and will.i.am first collaborated in 2012 for the hit “Scream & Shout.” Earlier this week, the pair teased a new song together, “Mind Your Business,” and it’s coming tomorrow, July 21. To increase anticipation, the Black Eyed Peas frontman discussed the track with CBS Mornings.

“Music is therapy for lots of people; people that make music, people that listen to music,” he said. “Dancing is therapy for lots of people; people that make music, people that listen to music. When you have that connection with music and rhythm and song and melody and harmony and you express yourself through that, it helps you with anything that you’re going through. I see that every time I see her dance on her Instagram, I light up because I see how much she loves music.”

“To collaborate with her now and then, when you’re in the studio and you’re making music, that’s the only thing that matters,” he continued. “So I see the same light, the same joy, the same love and passion.”

He added, “I’ve been a fan, a friend, and a supporter of Britney throughout the years. A supporter as far as someone who goes out and listens to her music, a supporter as far as someone that’s there to help champion her through her times where she was fighting for her liberation. She is an amazing person.”

Noname initially announced Sundial in April and pegged July 2023 for its release. More recently, her announcement of Jay Electronica as the featured artist on her “Balloons” single received some backlash and caused Noname to reconsider in a string of since-deleted tweets.

“y’all don’t want the album. fine,” Noname wrote last week. Another tweet read, “oh the song fa sho coming out lol. the album is another story. i’m good on the selective outrage. anyways hip-hop is in a great place right now. another noname album ain’t really necessary.”

Noname had a change of heart, it appears.

On Thursday morning, July 20, Noname posted the Sundial tracklist. If that wasn’t enough to indicate that the album is, indeed, still coming out, she made it explicitly clear in her Instagram caption.

“Sundial Tracklist [sunshine emoji] my album Sundial will drop august 11th,” Noname wrote. “i was going to release the single balloons tomorrow but i’d rather share it with the rest of the album. see y’all in a few weeks :)”

Sundial comes nearly five years after Noname’s last album, Room 25. Check out the tracklist below.

1. “Black Mirror”
2. “Hold Me Down” Feat. Jimetta Rose and The Voices Of Creation
3. “Balloons” Feat. Jay Electronica and Eryn Allen Kane
4. “Boom Boom” Feat. Ayoni
5. “Potentially The Interlude”
6. “Namesake”
7. “Beauty Supply’
8. “Toxic Afro Futurism”
9. “Oblivion” Feat. Ayoni and Common
10. “Gospel?” Feat. $ilkMoney, ​Billy Woods, and Stout

Barbie rager Ted Cruz doesn’t let social media punches affect him much. However, he recently let slip that the Cancun jokes do bother him a little bit, but Ted should never expect to live down that sunny vacation during a deadly ice storm in his home state. As well, Ted has attempted to joke about Cancun on his own, and he was swiftly reminded that he can’t get away with it, but the rest of humanity can keep telling ’em.

Of course, there’s another long-running Ted Cruz joke from the very bizarre time that was 2016. During the GOP primary race, people started making the (very funny) case that Ted could be the Zodiac Killer. Ted actually did think this was amusing, and he hasn’t forgotten, but still, Ted is not as good at making Ted jokes as he would believe.

Fast forward to 2023, and the Las Vegas PD has moved on a search warrant related to the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, and that’s certainly a trip down memory lane. In response to a tweet from the New York Times, Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson couldn’t resist a bit of a groaner: “To this day, we still don’t know where Ted Cruz was that fateful night.”

Ted had his own groaner in response: “First I was the Zodiac, now I killed Tupac?”

Again, yeah, Ted is not great at making Ted Cruz jokes, but at least this is better than him losing it over the Barbie movie. Although that might happen today, too. You never know!