Last night, Jimmy Fallon hosted The Tonight Show, as he does every night. Chance The Rapper borderline outpaced him in terms of screen time on yesterday’s episode, though, as he was all over the program.
First, he sat down for a chat with Fallon. During the interview, he reminisced about the 10-year anniversary of his 10 Day mixtape, noting how he was opening for Childish Gambino before its released and noticed an increase of fans showing up to see him perform once the tape dropped. He also discussed his and Vic Mensa’s upcoming music festival in Ghana and collaborating with artists from around the world.
Then, the two played a round of “Hey Robot,” where they have to get Amazon Echo to say a certain word without using the actual word themselves. Chance absolutely nailed it, not failing even a single word.
Later in the program, he and Joey Badass performed their recent collaboration “The Highs And The Lows.” Chance had a simple but effective stage design and did something pretty neat on a broadcast level, too, having the lyrics display word-by-word via an on-screen overlay that updated throughout the performance.
Check out the clips from Chance’s Tonight Show appearance above.
(This post contains spoilers for the Better Call Saul episode, “Breaking Bad.”)
Saul Goodman made his first appearance on Breaking Bad in “Better Call Saul,” which aired in 2009. Walter White and Jesse Pinkman made their first appearance on Better Call Saul in “Breaking Bad,” which aired in 2022. Got that? Good (man).
Both “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” are wholly or partially set in the same year (2008), but, well, let’s just say that actors Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul have aged in the 13 years between episodes. Was there ever consideration to pull an Irishman and digitally de-age them?
“We don’t do a ton of de-aging on the show,” Better Call Saul writer and director Thomas Schnauz told Variety. “There’s a little bit of stuff on the guys’ faces to take a few lines out here and there, but other than that, Aaron is not going to look like an 18-year-old kid or however old Jesse was during this time period.” It’s also a budgetary concern.
Schnauz admits that he “dread[s]” viewers cutting the scene from last night’s episode into Breaking Bad and trying to match the way they look then and now, but it’s not something you can worry too much about. It is what it is. We’re telling a story and you can roll with it or you start picking at: ‘He looks much older than he did in the original scene.’ We decided to go for it, and I’m glad we did.”
If only Vince Gilligan had the foresight to cast Paul Rudd as Jesse. Problem solved.
Ah, the art of the deflection. Sean Hannity’s one of the best at them, given that he’s prone to dropping a high-speed car chase at strategic moments. And one could argue that Biden’s assassination of the top Al Qaeda leader was (at least as far as timing goes) a deflection in and of itself. Yet the point remains that Sean Hannity wasn’t too distracted by the move, or at least, deflection mode was very much a thing as he chatted with Tucker Carlson for handoff time.
In the process, Hannity made an offhanded comment that’s presumably about Kid Rock, but he said Chris Rock, and boy, those two guys could not be more different. Rock’s been busy lately growing tired of Will Smith mentions, and Kid Rock’s been a regular guest on Fox News, including visiting with Tucker. Yet here we are:
Tucker didn’t correct his colleague, and simply smirks, possibly not even catching the error in real time, or maybe he simply enjoys “alternative facts”? It’s difficult to tell, nor do we know if Hannity’s actually attended a Kid Rock concert (if he did, he must have vaped hard).
And Tuck just smiles along as he has done for the past 6 + years of “alternative facts” being spewed on his network.
Actually yeah, they have been in the same room together. Not that it really matters, but they touched base at the 27th Annual Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony in 2012.
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Beyond this, get ready for memes and jokes. Exactly how do the kids do?
Last month, reports surfaced that Britney Spears is gearing up to make her musical comeback via a new rendition of “Tiny Dancer” with Elton John himself. Sources noted the pair had gotten together recently for a secret recording session at a Beverly Hills studio and that the song is set to come out at some point in August.
Now, we have something closer to an official confirmation of this, via somebody close to Spears: Paris Hilton.
In a conversation with Paul Voor Je Neus‘ Paul Barewijk at Belgium’s Tomorrowland festival (where Hilton performed) this past weekend, Barewijk brought up the John collab and Hilton said, “I know, it’s going to be iconic. I just heard it a couple days ago in Ibiza and it is… it’s insane.”
Paris Hilton says she’s heard Britney’s new remix of Tiny Dancer with Elton John! pic.twitter.com/mWIMO8EStk
Spears has yet to publicly address the collaboration, but she did reflect on her recent wedding a couple days ago, writing on Instagram, “Guys just two months ago I got married !!! Can you believe it ??? Going to Disneyland soon, my happy place !!! This is the dance floor at my fairytale wedding before we danced … this is our special car … thank you @drewbarrymore, @selenagomez, @madonna, and @parishilton for surprising me !!! Thank you to Selena for telling me all she wants is for me to be happy 3 times !!! It was a very, very, very special wedding !!!”
If anyone thinks Monday’s episode of Better Call Saul is the “worst episode ever,” they deserve to be locked in the same room as Huell. Speaking of! One of the things that we learned in “Breaking Bad” is that Huell eventually left the DEA Safe House and now lives in Louisiana; the episode also filled in blanks about Walt and Jesse kidnapping Saul, as seen in the “Better Call Saul” episode of Breaking Bad (we’ll have more on their return in the Better Call Saul Lie Detector Test recap), and oh yeah, Kim is alive! (Probably?)
Early in the episode, Saul uses a pay phone to contact Kim, who’s now living in Florida. They appear to get into a heated argument, but we don’t hear the context of the conversation, because we only see it from Saul’s side and the audio is muffled by passing trucks. But according to writer Thomas Schnauz, we’ll learn more about the call.
“We will learn the details of the phone call; we will know what was said in a future episode. It’s just right now we wanted to keep the mystery going of: What is going on in the world of Kim Wexler?” he told Entertainment Weekly. “You said she’s alive, but I don’t know. Is she alive? Can you tell from that phone call? He asked for Kim Wexler on the end of that line and then heard something that made him slam the phone down and break the glass. So we’ll find out in a future episode exactly what words were spoken.”
I still believe that in the final two episodes, we’ll learn that Kim is alive — but not alive and well. After all, living in Florida is a fate worse than death.
Slowthai found himself in a bit of a controversy over the weekend: While performing at Montreal’s Osheaga Festival, he wore a shirt with a giant swastika logo the front. While it had the word “destroy” on top, indicating his disdain for the Nazism and neo-Nazism the symbol has come to represent, seeing the symbol that prominently still rubbed some the wrong way.
So now, apologies have been made. The first came from Osheaga organizers, who tweeted yesterday, “A performer appeared on stage Saturday wearing a controversial t-shirt displaying a swastika that caused confusion. The t-shirt denounces the regime. We sincerely apologize to anyone who may have misinterpreted this message and felt hurt.”
Slowthai then followed that up with his own apology, writing, “I’m sorry to anyone who is offended by me wearing an anti-fascist/anti-regime t-shirt and the use of the symbol it represents. I want you to know I stand firmly against antisemitism and fascism of any kind, something the t-shirt was meant to illustrate with the word ‘destroy’ above the symbol.”
Slowthai has maintained a relatively low profile this year in terms of new music, as he’s been busy performing, like on the North American tour he had in April. He did pop up on Denzel Curry’s new album, though.
On August 19th, Hot Chip will be out with their eight studio album, Freakout/Release. As their prolific career has gone on, the UK electro-pop quintet have delved deeper into an exploration of disco and dance music forms from decades past. The album’s lead single, “Down,” saw them digging into ’60s soul grooves, while “Eleanor” felt like a reflection of the electro sounded that is uniquely theirs. Now on the album’s title track, the band have crafted an electro-disco jam with an industrial groove.
“I need an escape and some primitive healing,” Alex Taylor sings. The robotic effects feel forged in ’80s nostalgia, but there is something decidedly dark and bottled in within “Freakout/Release,” that gets, well… released.
In a statement, Taylor says producer Joe Goddard was inspired by a certain song from The White Stripes: “‘Freakout/Release’ is about pent-up energy and the need for release, and escape. It’s also about making sense of music, and at times being plagued by the thing you focus on — music never leaves my head for a second, which is usually a good feeling, but it can feel claustrophobic at times too. It’s also about finding your place in relation to music and to performing. The riff should feel brutal and dumb and elemental and Joe was thinking about ‘Seven Nation Army’ and the simplicity of that swinging from quiet to loud and back and forth.”
Watch the lyrics video for “Freakout/Release” above.
Freakout/Release is out 8/19 via Domino Records. Pre-order it here.
For years now, fans have wondered when/if Tom DeLonge would rejoin Blink-182 after leaving the band in 2015. Things on that front got pretty intense recently, when DeLonge may have hinted that a reunion was imminent or even had already started. Now, Mark Hoppus, somebody who’s actually officially in the band at the moment, has addressed the rumors.
As NME notes, Hoppus took to his Discord server yesterday to celebrate 30 years of Blink-182, as the group formed on August 1, 1992. Naturally, fans asked about the DeLonge rumors and Hoppus responded, “There is no news to share. There is no announcement. Today is thirty years of blink-182!” He added in another message, “If and when blink has any announcement about anything, you will hear it from the official blink-182 outlets. Not teased on a radio station like ‘tune in for a major announcement…Tom tagged Mark in a photo from two decades ago.’”
This all comes after Matt Skiba, who replaced DeLonge in the band upon his departure, declared he’s not sure about his status in the group, responding to a fan asking him about it, ““your guess is as good as mine. Regardless, I am very proud of and thankful for my time w @blink182. We shall see… [heart emoji].”
Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
There is always that one person in the friend group who silently suffers when everyone decides to order a pizza for dinner. Maybe you’re this person. We get it, pizza is delicious, it’s a near-perfect food, but sometimes — particularly if you eat pizza a lot — it just doesn’t hit the spot. To make things worse, the big national chain pizza joints don’t give you a lot of choice on their menus outside of pizza. All you’ve got are sides (which are often bread-driven and pizza-adjacent), and sometimes wings.
Well, suffer no more because Pizza Hut is rolling out an entire baked pasta menu — offering hungry foodies an option substantial enough to be a full meal in and of itself, perfect for those rare nights when the idea of pizza seems boring. For a limited time (but who knows how limited), Pizza Huts nationwide will be offering Chicken Alfredo, Veggie, Cheesy Alfredo, and Italian Meats.
Each order comes with your choice of an entire order of breadsticks or garlic bread, so in the event that you can’t decide whether you want pizza or pasta, ordering pasta kind of allows you to have your cake and eat it too. We ate all four pasta varieties and ranked them from least essential to most. Here’s the verdict, starting with the weakest of the four.
Oven Baked Pasta — Veggie
Dane Rivera
Tasting Notes:
I love veggie pizza. It’s fresh, fragrant, pleasingly vegetal, and provides a great mouthfeel. This dish attempts to capture that magic in baked pasta form and it misses the mark. This baked pasta features green peppers, onions, diced tomatoes, black olives, and tomato sauce over penne pasta smothered in a crispy layer of oven-baked cheese.
All of that sounds great, but unlike Pizza Hut’s veggie pizza (which is essentially the same makeup) the veggies get lost in all of the cheese and sauce. You can’t really taste it, it’s a mess of flavors that collide and clash rather than come together. A lot of that has to do with the sauce which Pizza Hut calls “sweet tomato” but doesn’t really taste like either word in that phrase.
There is a blandness to the sauce and it obscures the flavor of the veggies. The only flavor that really comes through is that layer of melted parmesan and lots of dried oregano.
The Bottom Line:
It’s a veggie pizza in baked pasta form, but it doesn’t really work. The flavors here never congeal in a satisfying way.
Oven Baked Pasta — Cheesy Alfredo
Dane Rivera
Tasting Notes:
Pizza Hut’s Oven Baked Cheesy Alfredo features two layers of baked parmesan and oregano over a bed of penne pasta smothered in alfredo sauce. There isn’t a lot to this pasta, but the sauce actually has some flavor so I like it better than the Veggie, even though it comes across as generally bland.
To put a finer point on it — the alfredo sauce is nothing special. But it’s not overly chunky or too garlicky like typical jarred alfredo, so it kind of exceeded my expectations. It’s cheesy and creamy if a tad too scarce considering how many noodles there are. While alfredo should indeed be simple, this isn’t so simple as to be truly ingredient driven (as in, you’re not tasting some marvelous 24-month parmesan or hand extruded noodles), leaving it in desperate need of something, anything, else to make it more interesting.
Throw some spinach and mushrooms in this thing, and you’ve got a decent little order of pasta.
The Bottom Line:
Add a few ingredients and you’ve got a solid pasta dish. As it comes, it’s a little bland, but still better than the Veggie.
Oven Baked Pasta — Italian Meats
Dane Rivera
Tasting Notes:
The Italian Meats pasta remedies the issue I had with the Veggie. The flavors are much more complementary here, as herb-forward sausage and spicy pepperoni add a much-needed meaty savoriness to this dish that wakes up that tomato sauce. You can actually taste the sweetness here.
The pasta consists of pepperoni, Italian sausage, and oven-baked cheese, with tomato sauce over penne pasta (the penne obsession is weird — this dish should feature rotini or maybe orecchiette). Like the Cheesy Alfredo, it’s a few ingredients shy of being a way better dish. Throw in some of those onions or bell peppers and you’ll add in a lot more flavor and freshness.
The Bottom Line:
Significantly better than the Veggie pasta, which uses the same sweet tomato sauce. A combination of those two dishes would make either better if ordering vegetarian isn’t a concern for you.
Oven Baked Pasta — Chicken Alfredo
Dane Rivera
Tasting Notes:
Chicken Alfredo is easily the most overrated dish in the pantheon of delicious Italian foods (we don’t even make it right) so it pains me to give this dish the top spot but… it’s the only one that tastes like it doesn’t need extra ingredients to make it good. Extra ingredients would still make it better though, so don’t shy away from adding more meat, spinach, or veggies to add more complexity.
The Hut keeps this one pretty simple, it’s just penne smothered in alfredo with chicken and a thick layer of toasty cheese. The best move is to work that cheese into the pasta itself, incorporating it into the sauce and giving a crispy and nutty infusion of parm to each bite.
The subtle hints of garlic in this creamy sauce compliment the oregano top layer perfectly, and the bites of white meat chicken are surprisingly tender and flavorful. My only big gripe is the ratio of cheese to the sauce, the Hut goes heavy on the former and it throws the balance off just a bit.
The Bottom Line:
The best of Pizza Hut’s baked pasta dishes, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make it better by adding some extra ingredients in to make it more substantial. Even red pepper flakes would go a long way to transform this into something truly satisfying and worth ordering when you don’t have a hankering for the Hut’s deep dish.
Over the weekend, while he was already being protested by families of 9/11 victims, Donald Trump found another way to be weird. That golf course wasn’t only playing host to a controversial Saudi tournament. It was also, it was revealed, the burial site of his first ex-wife, Ivana. Many wondered why he would do that. Some came up with one good reason: It might have been his attempt to cheat on taxes.
It’s not been confirmed if that’s the case or not, but Trump was widely dragged for the potential move. One of them was Trevor Noah, who used part of Monday night’s The Daily Show to take him to task.
Calling it “one of the wildest things ever,” Noah said when it comes to burying his late former spouse, Trump “may have managed to turn even that into a scam.” Trump’s golf club is located in Bedminster, New Jersey, and the Garden State has a law that even one burial plot can constitute a cemetery. And if one’s plot of land is designated as a cemetery, that means the owner is subject to all manner of tax breaks.
“A lot of people say, ‘I’ll pay taxes over my dead body!’ Trump means it. Just someone else’s body,” Noah cracked.
But, Noah said, it was no laughing matter. He called it “step too far” even for Trump, and that he “wouldn’t even laugh at” the idea of burying one’s wife in a golf course so as to save a couple bucks.
“If somebody said to me, ‘Donald Trump’s ex-wife died, he’s probably going to bury her on his golf course to save on taxes,’ I’d be like, ‘That’s not cool, man,’” Noah said. “But it turns out, Trump was like, ‘Say more…I’m going to send this to my accountant.’”
A little later in the segment, correspondent Desi Lydic came up with her own joke about Ivana Trump’s golf course internment. “God, I feel for all of Trump’s wives,” Lydic said. “Even in the afterlife, they still have to deal with his balls coming at them.”
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