GoneTrending

Muna’s new EP, Live At Electric Lady, hit streaming platforms today. With four stunning recorded versions of the band’s popular hits, including “Silk Chiffon” and “Kind Of Girl,” to older deep discography dives like 2019’s “Taken,” Muna proves that hunkering down at the legendary NYC studio paid off in their favor. However, the aptly-placed track five is drawing attention online.

That’s right. Muna recorded a live cover of Taylor Swift’s popular 2020 song “August,” which appeared on her album, Folklore. Their rendition slows down the pacing, complete with a calming acoustic guitar. By the second verse, the band incorporates layered vocals and a slightly-faster instrumental. Basically put, it’s a brilliant interpretation for both their own fans and Swifties discovering the song. (Even though the two fandoms have some overlap online.)

“The whole environment at Electric Lady Studios is so supportive and open, it often leads to making new creative choices while you’re in the midst of recording,” Muna told Pitchfork in a statement. “‘August’ took on this very breathy, quiet quality that we hadn’t anticipated, but we just went with.”

Another layer in the relevancy of Muna’s decision to cover “August” on a live release from Electric Lady comes in the form of a certain collaborator. Jack Antonoff went viral following the Disney+ film, Folklore: Live At Long Pond Studios, for enthusiastically playing guitar on Swift’s song. He also frequently records at the EL studio.

Muna’s Live At Electric Lady is out now via Saddest Factory. Buy/stream it here.

This week, Megan Thee Stallion returns to Saturday Night Live as both host and musical guest and in a hilarious promo, she shows off her comedic chops alongside series regular Sarah Sherman.

In the short skit, Sherman stops by Meg’s dressing room to share her excitement for Thee Stallion’s upcoming hosting gig, but it turns out she forgot something very important: All of her clothes (except for her shoes). Even worse, Meg’s the only one in the office with the heart to tell her, “You are completely naked.” When Sarah finds out, she’s completely disappointed that all of her coworkers and a bunch of people on the train just let her go. “Let me be the first to tell you,” Meg says. “Your whole WAP is out.” That’s what we call “topical humor,” ladies and gents — with a side of perfect comedic timing.

The video ends with Sherman’s assertion that “you’re gonna kill it this week, Megan Thee Stallion,” and we are kind of inclined to agree — mostly because Megan’s sort of already been killing it for the last few weeks. There was the moment she twerked on Halo‘s Master Chief at TwitchCon (the second fictional character with whom she’s done so this year), the announcement of yet another festival headlining gig for LA3C, and her launch of a mental health resource site “for bad bitches.”

Check out the promo for SNL above.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Since 1990, November has been celebrated as Native American Heritage Month. And millions of people enjoyed a day off on Monday to honor Indigenous Peoples Day (even if Donald Trump was demanding to “BRING BACK COLUMBUS DAY!”). As with most things, Rudy Giuliani has his very own way of marking the occasion, which this year included delivering a warped history lesson that lionized Christopher Columbus and seemed to suggest that America’s Indigenous peoples got what they deserved. It was not an episode of Drunk History, but it could have been.

As Raw Story reports, Giuliani was a guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room, where the former New York City mayor delivered an unhinged history of the world as he sees it:

Columbus is probably the first hero and there’s no evidence that he did any of these things. In fact, most of the atrocities they’re talking about occurred 30 years after he left. If anything, he was… benevolent. He tried very, very hard to avoid the wars that went on… I mean, look: The people he brought over with him, they weren’t saints. They were soldiers. But the people there were living in the third world, including a third world of violence where they scalped each other and killed each other and raped each other. This wasn’t a civilization they came to. This was a third-, fourth-world country. They had no idea of what they were facing. Columbus did everything he could to control it. It got out of control forty years later and he’s being blamed for it.

All of this, of course, is untrue. As Raw Story notes, Columbus — in his own diary — wrote about his very real intentions to enslave any Indigenous populations he encountered and then send them back to King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I as a kind of souvenir.

“They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything that is said to them; and I believe that they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion,” Columbus wrote. “Our Lord pleasing, at the time of my departure I will take six of them from here to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn to speak.”

Yep. Totally benevolent.

(Via Raw Story)

Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Netflix’s hit drama series, The Crown, has found itself placed under even more scrutiny than ever. The show, which has been retelling the history of the Royal Family, has already weathered intense criticism from Buckingham Palace during its Season 4 run on Netflix. That season focused on King Charles III’s courtship of Princess Diana, and it ruffled enough feathers that the Royal Family unsuccessfully demanded a disclaimer be placed before each episode.

The upcoming Season 5 of The Crown will focus on Charles and Diana’s well-documented divorce that played out in the tabloids. (Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki will play Charles and Di, respectively.) However, that season isn’t even streaming yet, but again, the Royal Family is already freaking out. Via Deadline:

Prince William is already reported to have expressed consternation because an episode of the fifth season of The Crown, which streams on Netflix from November 9, shows how BBC interviewer Martin Bashir engaged in subterfuge to gain the now infamous Panorama interview with Diana which damned Charles and his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, now Queen Consort.

With the Royal Family watching their every move, Deadline reports that there’s high anxiety on the Season 6 production as it prepares to film Diana’s final days in the next two weeks. The producers and creative team are reportedly “on edge” as the controversial scenes will examine the moments leading up to Diana’s death. However, The Crown creator Peter Morgan has emphasized that the series will not recreate the infamous Paris car crash.

Will that creative decision stop the Royal Family from blasting the show? Probably not. The main concern from Buckingham Palace is how The Crown portrays King Charles, who is obviously not going to look great during the final years of Diana’s life.

The Crown Season 5 premieres November 9 on Netflix.

(Via Deadline)

There’s a sense among some people that America isn’t old. I’ve heard it over and over again when people are talking about how old Prague or Paris or Rome is. The refrain is often the same, “we just don’t have stuff that old in America,” when referring to places and landmarks built during the Age of Colonialism between the 1500 and 1900s. Part of that is the complete erasure of Indigenous Americans from the wider conversation about the United States. Another part is simple ignorance of the width and breadth of the Indigenous communities/nations in this country.

There were cities all over this continent that were simply wiped out by European and then American colonialism. So a huge part of the reason that America doesn’t “have stuff that old” is that it was taken away and never allowed to grow and become “old” in the first place. Hell, 1,000 years ago, cities like Cahokia were bigger and more population dense than Paris or London. Then the Spanish showed up and now it’s an archaeological site.

Still, you can — right now — go to St. Louis and travel about 30 minutes west of the airport and find a massive expanse of an ancient mound city in nearby Illinois. Traveling there will give you a glimpse into the vastness of the Mississippian Empire which was largely extinguished by the 1600s, thanks to the Spanish spreading canons and viruses throughout the continent the century prior. Today, Cahokia is truly vast. The ancient city covers 2,220 acres with 120 mound structures still remaining. It’s estimated that up to 40,000 people lived there at the peak of the city around 1100/1200, which would have made it a larger metropolitan area than both Paris and London at the time.

For most, walking around a place like Cahokia is a look backward at something lost to time forever. When I went there that tragedy rang true to me too. However, what was more tragic was what could have been and what we/Indigenous people/all of us missed out on. This was a great city in North America with culture — a food scene, sports arenas, nightlife, and all the trappings of a city — all snuffed out before it had a chance to become “stuff that old in America.” I think about how rural places like Japan were up until very late in the 1800s and where that country is today when it comes to advanced cityscapes and preserved historical districts. Had history gone a few different ways a couple of times, maybe that could have happened for the Pacific Northwest Salish world too, or the Lakota in South Dakota, or the Seminole in Florida … or the people of Cahokia.

This leads me to an admission: It’s painful traveling around the U.S. and the wider world as an Indigenous person. In the U.S., you’re constantly reminded of everything you and others lost at every turn. But to say that there’s “nothing left” is also untrue.

Speaking of 1,000 years ago, a quick trip to New Mexico and you can find yourself staying in the longest continuously inhabited town in the United States in Taos Pueblo. The neighborhood is only 16 acres, is home to 4,500 folks today, and is part of the larger Spanish and American colonial city of Taos. That said, this is a place that was first built around 1,000 years ago and has been continuously inhabited by the Tiwa-speaking people since. If you want to talk old world, Berlin didn’t even exist 1,000 years ago and yet I’ve heard people in Berlin say “there’s nothing as old as their city in America…” It’s frustratingly untrue and a very colonial POV of the world. But that’s not the point.

The point is, we’re still here. And yes, there’s old stuff to be enjoyed and experienced in the United States too. And as an Indigenous American who grew up on the classic American road trip, I can tell you from experience that there’s a lot to be experienced in “Indian Country” out there.

I’ve spoken about hitting the Olympic Trail in Western Washington and treating it as a smoked salmon trail that takes you from Indian Reservation to Indian Reservation. I’m not going to rehash that as you can read it right here and then go and do it. I will say that it’s a great place to start your journey into Indian Country, as you’ll be treated to beautiful natural beauty, you’ll eat great Indigenous food, and you’ll get a real sense of the poverty that still reigns supreme over Indigenous life in America.

As mentioned above, you can fly into St. Louis and visit Cahokia or travel to Taos and stay in a pueblo. But there’s still so much more — from New Echota in Georgia where the Cherokee had built entire towns before being ethnically cleansed from the area to Oklahoma (another part of Indian Country that you can visit right now) to ruined cities of Chaco Canyon (also New Mexico) to the Hopewell Mounds in Ohio to Little Big Horn Battlefield in Montana and so much more.

But all of those places are about looking back. Let’s look at “right now” — the goal of our forthcoming “Uproxx Fall Travel Hot List.” You can hit the road and find modern Indian Country in every corner of America as well. And one of the absolute best places to do that is in South Dakota.

Below, I’ve cobbled together an itinerary through the state that hits important stops that’ll illuminate 21st-century Indigenous American life. What makes South Dakota so prominent, in my mind, as the perfect Indigenous road trip destination is that you’re immediately emersed in Indigenous life and communities the moment you step foot in Rapid City. And if you chose the right path, you can go ever deeper into those communities while supporting them with your tourist dollars and, hopefully, learning a little something along the way. After all, isn’t that the whole point of travel?

If this isn’t the road trip for you, well… the nation is rich with options for those who are ready to understand that America has a rich Indigenous history and that we, its Indigenous stewards, are still here right now.

Sample Itinerary Through Indigenous South Dakota:

First stop — Rapid City

Rapid City feels like an Indian city that’s been blended with a very white American colonial one. On Main Street, you’ll find classic dive bars and gun shops next to Indigenous/Lakota galleries, shops, and street art. There are micro-breweries and pizza shops with board games next to protest banners proclaiming “You’re On Stolen Land!” It’s a place of multitudes, folks.

If you’re walking Main Street, stop into Prairie Edge Trading Co. & Galleries. One-half of the store is mostly touristy kitschy items. The other half is a large gallery that mostly features Lakota artists and both tribal and modern art that you can buy — a real souvenir, if you will. In the back, there’s a bead shop where you can get some supplies if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s run by Lakota who are shooting the shit about whatever projects they’re currently working on.

Across the street, you’ll find Art Alley which is a refuge for Indigenous street artists in the city. Near the top of the alley by the vintage Hotel Alex Johnson, you might come across some young Lakota kids freestyling and spray painting on any given day.

Second Stop — Crazy Horse/Black Hills

Heading into the Black Hills is a tough proposition for Indigenous folks. On the one hand, it’s an amazingly important cultural place where great introspection can take place amongst highly sacred mountains. On the other hand, it’s very heavily touristed. And unfortunately, the vast majority of those tourist dollars are not going to the Lakota who were promised their sacred land “as long as the grass grows and the water flows.” It’s frustrating to drive around and see so much money being spent and the Lakota getting none of it.

Rant aside, it’s also nice to do things that are touristy in the Black Hills even if the money isn’t going to the Lakota. Taking a hot air balloon ride at sunrise over the Black Hills is a spectacular way to see the whole region as it’s bathed in the rich morning light. Sometimes you just have to let the beauty of a place wash over you and that’s a great way to do it.

One way to really immerse yourself in Indigenous Black Hills culture is to stop in at the Crazy Horse Memorial and Indian Museum of North America. The memorial is the largest mountain carving in the world, or at least will be when finished. Crazy Horse is memorialized on the back of his horse, pointing back East to his ancestral homelands that the Lakota were pushed away from by the American colonizers. The Black Hills, the historical religious refuge of the Lakota, was where many a last stand took place before the weight of American colonial power crushed the great nations of the Lakota.

The greatness is on display at the Indian Museum of North America. There are rooms and halls full of artifacts from previous centuries alongside modern art from present-day Indigenous artists. Overall, it’s a place where the past and present are celebrated in equal measure.

Oh, and don’t forget to try an Indian Taco from the canteen.

Third Stop — Wounded Knee/Pine Ridge

Further down the road from the Black Hills, you can take a trip through one of the world’s most impoverished places, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There are several stops in Pine Ridge that are worth hitting like the Red Cloud Indian School which was the site of forced assimilation of children and is still a fully operational school to this day.

The most important spot, however, is the Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial. The graveyard on a small hill just above the Wounded Knee Creek is surrounded by a seemingly endless sea of green grass, ebbing and flowing in the constant breeze of the Great Plains. There’s no infrastructure in the place, besides a footpath to a small arch with a cross and a cemetery surrounded by a falling-apart cyclone fence. It’s woefully in disrepair.

Still, the memorial honors the people who died on a fateful cold December day in 1890 by a hail of U.S. Army gun fire, rifle butts, horse hooves, and blades. Over 300 unarmed and starving men, women, and children were slaughtered with their corpses left to freeze on the prairie that day for the crime of … basically … dancing and practicing their own religion. 20 U.S. soldiers received the US Army Medal of Honor for that heinous act of genocide. Those medals have never been rescinded.

When you’re there, this history isn’t on display. There’s a small gravestone for the massacred and then the grave markers of the descendants of those who fell at Wounded Knee that day. Daughters, cousins, sons, fathers, and mothers had their remains buried at the site to be closer to the ones they lost in 1890. There’s often a Lakota elder hanging around to tell stories of their family members buried at the cemetery or the ones they lost at the massacre. These elders make their meager income by being quasi-docents for a place the U.S. would prefer you forget about. So please, give any elder there telling stories a large tip (a $20 or $50 is fine).

Last Stop — Akta Lakota Museum

Further east on the banks of the mighty Missouri River at the intersection of the Lower Brule and Crow Creek nations, you’ll find the Akta Lakota Museum. The museum is on the site of the Saint Joseph Indian School, which also has a dark past of forced assimilation of Native kids over the last two centuries; but is reformed now.

The museum is a fascinating and interactive look back at the history of the local Lakota culture. It’s free to enter and only takes about 30 minutes to walk through. It’s kind of an old-school museum with life-size dioramas of “life scenes” from different eras of life on the Plains reaching back millennia to the present day. There’s a gift shop featuring work from contemporary Indigenous artists, including the kids at St. Joseph School. The museum, displays, and history is the work of the local Lakota students and historians and offers an unfiltered and deep look into their vast culture. It’s a must-stop.

Additional Photos from South Dakota:

On Tuesday, faux Democrat — and rumored Russian asset — Tulsi Gabbard officially announced that she was leaving the Democratic party, which was a surprise to only those people who didn’t realize she was a Democrat in the first place. The one-time longshot presidential candidate’s vocal support of Vladimir Putin and habit of pushing Fox News-approved conspiracy theories have long made her an outsider within her own party. Which also made it not-at-all surprising that she spent last night chatting with Tucker Carlson, who could barely compose himself in Tulsi’s presence (and may have freshly tanned his testicles in preparation for the interview).

When the former Hawaii congresswoman beamed in from whatever planet she is on, Tucker immediately transformed into a pubescent boy with a crush on his teacher — weird voice cracks and all. Describing Gabbard as “the future” of her former party, Carlson seemed concerned with how she was feeling after her brave escape from the clutches of those evil Democrats.

Gabbard, feeling pretty good about herself, explained that she has always been “independent-minded” and told Tucker that her main goal has always been to uphold the values of the Constitution, which is something she felt she could not do as a Dem. “If you look at today’s Democratic party, it’s controlled by fanatical ideologues who hate freedom,” Gabbard said, as Tucker nodded in agreement. “They despise the Constitution. They actively find ways to undermine our God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution, like freedom of speech.”

Gabbard went on to explain to a clearly enraptured Carlson how immovable the Dems are, claiming that if you don’t agree with them, “they will do all that they can to destroy you.”

Carlson, with his tongue practically hanging out of his mouth, told Tulsi how “inspiring” her words were. And how “I feel like printing out your words and asking every Republican candidate who comes on this show to read them. And if you can’t read them, I’m not voting for you.”

Geez, get a room!

It’s a painful five minutes of pandering and ass-kissing, but if you want to watch it for yourself, you can above. Just be sure to stay for the part where Tulsi shares that one of her former Democratic colleagues texted her three thumbs-up emojis after hearing the news of her parting of the ways with the party.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Ryan Murphy seems to have moved on from making content about high school a high school show choir and has remained focused on what he does best: scaring viewers to their core with real-life crime stories. Murphy’s new project The Watcher will premiere on October 13th, just days after Monster: The Jeffrey Dhamer Story became one of the most streamed Netflix shows on the platform.

Following Murphy’s deep dive into the true crime genre, The Watcher will follow the very real and very horrifying true story of the Broaddus family who move into their dream home and begin receiving chilling letters from a stalker who only goes by The Watcher. Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale lead the cast, alongside Emmy-winner Jennifer Coolidge, Mia Farrow, Noma Dumezweni, Joe Mantello, Richard Kind, and Margo Martindale.

In 2014, the couple purchased a New Jersey home for nearly $1.4 million before being served taunting letters and phone calls from a stalker who would request the children’s blood. The stalker in question claimed they looked over the house for decades. The story was chronicled in a 2018 piece in The Cut, which described the family’s horrifying ordeal.

Spoiler alert: The Watcher was never found, though there are many theories online, so it will be interesting to see which one Murphy ran with. Maybe Murphy knows something that we don’t! The house was sold again years later and, so far, there have not been any more stalking incidents there, as far as we know.

On a lighter note, here is a brilliant tour of the house with Coolidge’s character, a real estate agent. Act now! This house will not last!

The Watcher drops on October 13th on Netflix.

(Via People and The Cut)

Cardi B just celebrated her 30th birthday earlier this week (on Tuesday, October 11) and got one hell of a present to commemorate the occasion, adding another historical milestone to a career that is already chock-full of them. Her 2018 singles “I Like It” and “Bodak Yellow” were recently both certified 11x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), making her the first female rapper ever to have two singles sell 11,000,000 each. While a lot of this can be attributed to the advent of streaming, it’s still an impressive accomplishment, considering hip-hop’s well-established gender imbalance.

Cardi, who recently landed another hit on the Hot 100 alongside GloRilla with “Tomorrow 2,” celebrated her birthday Tuesday night with a burlesque-themed party in Los Angeles attended by Chloe X Halle, Jamie Foxx, Tiffany Haddish, and more. Well-wishers included her “Shake It” collaborator Dougie B and fellow rapper Latto.

Cardi was due for some good news after her last couple of weeks. While she should have been celebrating the success of “Tomorrow 2,” she was instead duking it out in wars of words with City Girls’ JT and rising rapper Akbar V. She also recently accepted a plea deal in her 2018 strip club assault case, which she said prompted her to forego a multi-million-dollar deal with Activision for a Call Of Duty endorsement campaign. Here’s hoping her next year will be better than the last.

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

The Stranger Things writers are hard at work on the fifth and final season of the Netflix series (they’ve got the blurry photo to prove it), but they recently took time on Twitter to share the “crazy sh*t” that nearly happened in previous seasons.

“Crazy sh*t that almost happened #1: In season 2, a possessed Will was going to kill Bob,” reads one tweet. The other revelation would’ve had a bigger impact on the overall story: “Crazy sh*t that almost happened #2: In season 2, Eleven was going to mercy kill her mother.” Eleven’s mother, Terry, is still alive in a catatonic state and possesses a number of powers, including telepathy. As for Bob, well, he was too good for this world.

More TV show writers should reveal the “crazy sh*t” that almost happened. Did Don and Peggy from Mad Men go on a road trip to visit the world’s largest peanut? Did Tony Soprano get into Big Buck Hunter? Did Moe’s bar rag on The Simpsons come to life with the voice of Jeremy Irons? We’ll never know (except for the Simpsons one — that actually happened). The Stranger Things writers have opened a world of possibilities.

Stranger Things will return for its final season… eventually.

(Via Yahoo! Entertainment)

Between Kanye West’s interview with Tucker Carlson and L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez’s leaked audio about wanting to give her white colleague’s Black son “a beatdown,” it’s been a big week for racism. And Trevor Noah wanted to talk about all of it — especially Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville’s impressive feat of cramming more racism into 15 seconds of a speech than perhaps any other person before or after him.

On Tuesday night, Noah mockingly feigned surprise that a Republican senator from Alabama, of all places, would dare to say the quiet part out loud — and on TV no less. During a rally over the weekend, a fired-up Tuberville told the crowd that had gathered that Democrats had the power to put an end to crime in America, but that “they want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you’ve got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. They are not owed that. BULLSHIT!”

Noah was surprised, and maybe even a little impressed, by Tuberville daring to throw in that whiplash-inducing mention of reparations:

I’ve heard racists say all kinds of things. I’ve heard them say that Black people are criminals, and I’ve heard them say that reparations are reverse racism. But it takes a true racism innovator to combine both ideas at the same time. This is like the stuffed crust pizza of racism. ‘Cause I knew you could have crust, and I knew that you could have cheese. But I didn’t know that you could put the cheese inside the crust that’s holding the rest of the cheese. Because now the crust is holding the cheese at the same time… It’s genius!!

Noah knew that many of his viewers would be confused by Tuberville’s argument. And to those people, he offered this: “Congratulations. You’re sane.” But Noah did have some questions about just how sound Tuberville’s argument really was:

How does this argument explain Black people who steal things from other Black people? ‘Cause then who’s reparating who? And secondly, how is this man going to stand on stage and imply that all criminals are Black? That is disgusting! Has this senator never watched Netflix? I’m not going to stand here and let Tommy Tuberville erase all these white people’s contributions.

Noah dubbed that double standard “the real racism.”

You can watch the full clip above, beginning at the 1:45 mark.