GoneTrending

A big lesson when it comes to attending concerts is that music lovers are prone to breaking out into violence, whether the performers are delivering the grittiest of raps or the most soothing soul ballads. Now, when fights occur on the floor area where there aren’t any seats and it is a battle for space, it makes sense to an extent. However, in the case of Erykah Badu’s most recent concert where a scuffle broke out in the stands, there are more questions as to how it could have got to that point.

In a Twitter clip posted today (July 8), Badu can be seen on stage taking a drink before asking the concertgoers if they are doing alright. Hilariously, the camera then pans to the stands where multiple women can be seen throwing blows and attempting to remove clothing while one even straddles her opponent as someone yells, “Oh my god!”

It definitely gives off two-on-one handicap match vibes a la WWE, but thankfully bystanders stepped in to break it up. All the while, the 51-year-old continues performing her classic record “Window Seat.” It is unclear whether Badu was aware of what was going on or not, but if any music can heal the vengeful spirits of said fighters, it is hers.

Check out the clip of the fight above.

Cordae may have decided that his most recent album, From A Bird’s Eye View, doesn’t quite measure up to his debut, The Lost Boy, but that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to push the new album in new and unexpected directions. The latest is a live, visual version of From A Bird’s Eye View that will include live versions of the album’s standouts “C Carter,” “Chronicles,” “Sinister,” and “Super.” The live version of the album is available now, exclusively on Facebook. You can check it out here.

In addition to promoting From A Bird’s Eye View, Cordae has been busy on other projects, including launching his label, Hi-Level Productions, and explaining his Hi-Level philosophy in an insightful TED Talk. Musically, he recently collaborated with North Carolinian rap crooner Morray on “Still Here,” and is preparing for the European leg of his From A Bird’s Eye View Tour, which will include dates in Amsterdam, Belfast, Dublin, London, Manchester, Paris, Stockholm, and more. You can see the dates for that below.

09/27 — Belfast, UK @ Limelight
09/28 — Dublin, Ireland @ The Academy
09/30 — Manchester, UK @ Academy 2
10/01 — Birmingham, UK @ Institute 2
10/02 — London, UK @ Electric Brixton
10//05 — Brussels, Belgium @ Botanique Orangerie
10/06 — Paris, France @ Elysse Monmarte
10/07 — Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Melkweg (The Max)
10/09 — Cologne, Germany @ Carlswerk Victoria
10/11 — Copenhagen, Denmark @ Lille Vega
10/13 — Stockholm, Sweden @ Klubben
10/14 — Oslo, Norway @ Vulkan
10/17 — Berlin, Germany @ Astra
10/18 — Vienna, Austria @ Flex
10/19 — Zurich, Switzerland @ Dynamo

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

The Weeknd is kicking off his After Hours Til Dawn Tour tonight to the tune of a sold out show at Toronto’s Rogers Centre. Selling out a 55,000 capacity show in his hometown stadium is a full circle moment for The Weeknd and the magnitude of it all was definitely lost on Drake, one of his earliest supporters. In a video posted to his Instagram Stories, Drake, who just released his latest album, Honestly, Nevermind last month, fawns over hearing The Weeknd for the first time in the driveway of his old Toronto apartment and he was all in his feels about it.

“Ok, look… This right here, this little driveway area right here, this is the first place that I ever heard the Weeknd’s music, right here,” Drake says in the clip, moving the camera over to show the area. He’s borderline gushing and maybe a little emotional from a night out.

He shouts out Oliver El-Khatib (“my brother, of course”) for playing him The Weeknd back then, before continuing with his thought: “This is my old building, in Toronto. We were parked out here, and it was raining. Right here. And that same guy selling out SkyDome tomorrow night… not the Rogers Centre. ‘Cause we just still call it the SkyDome. That man is selling out the SkyDome tomorrow. So I just want anybody that’s trying to do this sh*t to understand… Like, I heard this man’s music right here for the first time. Pouring rain. It’s a great life.”

You have to appreciate not only Drake’s pure love for The Weeknd, but also his commitment to still calling the Rogers Centre the SkyDome, even though the name changed back in 2005. Regardless, Suffice it to say that Drake will be cheering Abel along on stage like an NBA bench-warmer tonight.

After declaring in May that a new album was finished, Death Cab For Cutie are in the midst of rolling out Asphalt Meadows, which is set for release on September 16. They released the lead single “Roman Candles” with the announcement, and now they’ve debuted a new song at last night’s show in Newport, Rhode Island.

The tune is called “From Here To Forever,” and it’s jangly and colorful, not unlike their 2005 hit “Soul Meets Body.” At three and a half minutes, it moves at a playful, lively pace and has a texture of hope. It’s not as experimental as “Roman Candles,” which was much darker, reckoning with “the crippling, existential dread that goes hand in hand with living in a nervous city on a dying planet, and that the only way to be in the moment is to let it all go,” Ben Gibbard said upon the release. “The lyrics were cobbled from a couple of different songs dealing with my general sense of anxiety; the feeling that the fabric that weaves a functioning society together was crumbling during the pandemic.” The worry feels absent from this track, focused more on levity.

Watch the band perform “From Here To Forever” above.

Asphalt Meadows is out 9/16 via Atlantic. Pre-order it here.

Death Cab For Cutie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Ahead of his upcoming Comic-Con appearance, Shazam himself, Zachary Levi has released a first look of the upcoming installment Fury Of The Gods.

Okay, the first look is really more of a short glimpse, but you get to see Levi in his iconic suit and using his powers before saying “just being a tease.” So meta! Levi and Co. will be at Comic-Con at the end of this month, where we can likely expect some more thorough footage.

Not much has been revealed about the upcoming sequel to the hit 2019 superhero movie, but the all-star cast includes Rachel Zegler, Helen Mirren (!), and Lucy Liu, who will all play daughters of the God Atlas, who famously gave Shazam his powers in the first film. Shazam is the buff alter-ego of a teenager named Billy Batson, who gets his God-like powers when he says, “Shazam!” It’s pretty straightforward, right?

This isn’t the only movie getting a first look at Comic Com: fellow DC property Black Adam was initially supposed to be a part of the Shazam sequel before The Rock managed to secure his own movie, which will also premiere this fall before Shazam premieres in December.

Shazam! Fury Of The Gods hits theaters on December 21st.

A Smoky Negroni — sometimes called a South by Southwest if made with Ardbeg 10 — is a bold and delicious summer cocktail. Strike that, it’s a great cocktail, year-round.

However, if you have a backyard smoker and a crew coming over to eat mounds of fatty meats, then this cocktail is the perfect pairing. The key though, is that you need a peaty whisky with flavor notes that lean more into fatty smoked meats and backyard firepits with marshmallows than Band-Aids, oyster pearls, or ashtrays. Not all peated whiskies are created equal.

For that application, you need a little Lagavulin. And while the purists will think it’s blasphemy to make cocktails with Lagavulin 16, trust me, it’s what you want to do here. Say it with me, “the better the spirit you use in your cocktail, the better the cocktail will be.” Use shitty wine in your ragu, your ragu will taste like that shitty wine. The same goes with whisk(e)y or rum or vodka in a cocktail.

Okay, rant over. This cocktail really is a modern twist on a centuries-old classic that just works. So, let’s cut to the chase and stir one up!

Also Read: The Top Five Cocktail Recipes of the Last Six Months

• Our ‘Perfect Whisky And Coke’ Recipe Uses The Last Brand You’d Expect
• The Hemingway Daiquiri Is A Deeply Refreshing Summer Cocktail — Here’s The (Very Simple) Real Recipe
• The Godfather Is A Simple Scotch Cocktail To Power You Through Winter
• Recipe: The Amaretto Sour Is The Ideal Cocktail To Close Out January
• The Tom Collins Is A Classic Cocktail That’s Perfect For The Hotter Days Ahead

Smoky Negroni

Ingredients:

• 1.5 oz. Lagavulin 16
• 1.5 oz. Campari
• 1.5 oz. Carpano Antica Formula Vermouth
• Ice
• Lemon peel

As mentioned above, I’m using Lagavulin 16. You should be able to find it in any decent liquor store. While you can use other peated whiskies, you really need that backyard smoker fattiness to make this a summertime winner. Laga has that in spades. A brinier peaty like Talisker doesn’t quite hit the same note (though their Distillers Edition isn’t far off). That said, if you’re pairing this with a seafood tower, then Talisker would be the play for this drink.

But a peat monster that tastes like licking burnt Band-Aids in a cold Weber (cough, cough, Laphroaig, cough, cough) is a little too overpowering for the Campari and vermouth. On the other end of the spectrum, a super low peaty like Bowmore, Bunnahabbin, or Dalwhinnie kind of gets lost in the mix, especially any of the peatiness since those whiskies are so mildly peated in the first place.

What You’ll Need:

• Cocktail mixing glass/jug
• Cocktail strainer
• Rocks glass
• Barspoon
• Paring knife
• Jigger

Method:

• Add the whisky, Campari, and vermouth to a mixing jug. Add a large handful of ice. Stir until the glass jug is ice cold to touch, about 30 to 45 seconds.
• Strain the cocktail into the glass over new ice.
• Slice a thin layer of lemon peel off the lemon and express the oils over the cocktail (hold the peel toward the glass and bend across its axis with your thumbs).
• Drop the lemon peel into the glass and serve.

Bottom Line:

As you can see from my images, you don’t need any fancy cocktail equipment to make a cocktail. I used an IKEA pint glass and straw for mixing and a rubber spatula to strain the drink into the waiting glass. All of my cocktail equipment is somewhere heading towards a container ship on the North Atlantic coast. So I improvised. And you can too. Hell, I’m even making block ice in old Tupperware containers and breaking it up with a hammer like an early-aughts bar hipster in suspenders (insider tip, block ice is actually way better for cooling and keeping drinks cold, so…).

Anyway, this is pretty delicious. The fatty aspects of the Lagavulin meld beautifully with the bitterness of the Campari and the sweetness of the vermouth. It’s kind of like that hint of espresso you get when you use coffee grounds as a rub on a fatty piece of meat before you put it in a smoker. The peatiness gets very sweet on the nose along with the woody botanicals leaning into an almost rock candy sweetness that’s just been kissed with firepit smoke. It’s not quite a singed marshmallow but it’s not far away from that either.

The overall feel of the drink is bold — this is still a Negroni after all. You get those hefty bitter and woody botanicals and roots next to soft and slightly fruity vermouth with a twinge of fatty peated malt all brightened by that spritz of lemon oil. It’s a beautiful drink and the perfect pairing for backyard smoke-out.

Last summer, Sacha Baron Cohen emerged victorious after a judge dismissed a $95 million defamation lawsuit filed by failed Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore. The suit stemmed from a 2018 episode of Cohen’s Who Is America? series on Showtime, which featured Moore setting off a “pedophile detector” and storming off the set after being humiliated. In another legal victory for Cohen, the dismissal was upheld by a court of appeals who agreed with the initial judge’s decision that, obviously, the whole thing was a comedy gag. Also, Moore signed a waiver before the appearance, which has come back to bite him twice.

Via Entertainment Weekly:

Now, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan has upheld the lower court’s decision, citing the disclosure agreement. The three presiding judges also found that the “obviously farcical” pedophile detector segment was “clearly comedy” and that “no reasonable person could believe [the pedophile detector] to be an actual, functioning piece of technology.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, Moore plans to file another appeal, and if the case somehow goes in front of the current Supreme Court stacked with Donald Trump appointees, there could be a very different outcome.

In the meantime, the dismissal marks a winning streak for Cohen who had sued a cannabis company for the unauthorized use of his Borat character for a billboard. The two parties reached a satisfactory agreement, and Cohen dismissed the case. The actor also prevailed over a lawsuit filed by the family of a Borat 2 subject who died shortly after filming. The family accused Cohen of tricking Holocaust survivor Judith Dim Evans into appearing in the film. However, Cohen produced footage of him explaining his own Jewish heritage to Evans and detailing how her scene would help battle anti-Semitism. The family dismissed the suit “unconditionally.”

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

(Spoilers from The Boys season finale will be found below.)

Another season of The Boys is in the books, so to speak. The third round of Vigilantes Vs. Supes ended with a climactic throwdown of those Supes. Homelander (Antony Starr) got his ass beat by Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), who then leaped out of a window, nearly sacrificing her own life to save everyone from a nuclear Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). When it comes to The Boys themselves, they landed in the thick of this battle, but their internal turmoil is no less fraught. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) betrayed the fan-favorite character of Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), and as Alonso told us in an interview, that leaves The Boys in an unprecedented spot heading into Season 4.

All along, Mother’s Milk (who’s officially known as MM on the show) has been the most steady, dependable presence on The Boys. He’s the rational member in terms of strategy. He holds a clear vision of why they are fighting against Vought International’s Supes, and boy, did his story go to raw places this season. We learned why his obsessive-compulsive disorder took root and why the trigger of Soldier Boy’s presence ended up worsening MM’s OCD, and how the show portrays the agony with deference. And fans have really responded, as Laz was gracious enough to discuss with us.

In addition, I absolutely had to Laz about the most disgusting moment of the show’s recent “Herogasm” episode. Obviously, I’m talking about the scene where MM and Starlight open a door, and a Supe unleashes the biggest money shot ever seen onscreen. It landed all over MM (you can watch that moment here and react like Erin Moriarty does), who immediately (and for understandable reasons) needed a bathroom. And that’s the careful tightwire that this show navigates: putting this character — the guy who least wants to be touched by Love Sausage, for example — into the most revolting scenarios but still managing to respectfully regard the anxiety that dominates his life, all going back to what Soldier Boy did, decades ago.

We also discussed how different Mother’s Milk is from the comics, and why it’s so nuts that some far-right viewers didn’t realize (until recently) that Homelander is not a good guy. Now, what of MM? That’s a whole other story.

Let’s start by acknowledging how different MM is on the show versus the comics. Eric Kripke discouraged Jensen Ackles from reading the comics before playing Soldier Boy. Did that apply to you, too?

I was discouraged from Season 1! Because MM had powers in the comics, and here, we didn’t. In Season 1, I knew that I wouldn’t have those powers, so by Season 3, I had bought into our version of the story. And I really liked the tie-in between Soldier Boy and MM’s backstory, primarily because during 2020, Eric and I were talking about everything.

Because of the pandemic?

Yeah, usually we go from season to season and really don’t have that much time in between to talk and get inspirations from life and add it into the story. But in 2020, we stopped for a year because of Covid. So we were talking about everything from Covid remedies and ways to strengthen your immune system to George Floyd and how to bring some of those real stories (that exist in our society) and infuse them into the characters. That’s where the Soldier Boy and MM tie-in came in. Because Soldier Boy represents good ol’ American values and idealism, but that only works for some people. It hasn’t historically included everyone, and so while to some people Soldier Boy was a hero, in our community, he was policing people very, very hard and not really regarding human life in the process, and that’s what the story was addressing: how it affects everyone else.

Well, MM doesn’t have powers in the show, and there’s an underlying vibe that there are no heroes here, but at the end of the finale, MM’s daughter called him her hero. Maeve pulls off the heroics in the finale against Homelander, but do you think MM’s ultimately the biggest hero of the show?

Well, I wouldn’t say that he’s the biggest hero of the show because everybody plays a part, and it all shows us that we can’t do it alone. We have to rely on each other. You know, even in moments, you might have to take up with somebody that you’re not very fond of to get to your objective. Butcher teaming up with Soldier Boy was not cool to MM. It really broke a level of trust between these two that I think is unfinished business because, you know, up until now, they both knew each other’s demons. Or what they had was trust. And Butcher broke that.

Big time. He stopped MM from pursuing Soldier Boy, who killed part of his family.

So I think that that has fractured The Boys to a certain degree, but the show is always talking about how you don’t need powers. What you need is unity. What happens when that unity is fractured? And so, here we are.

Beyond the action of this finale, MM’s arc this season took him further into the representation of OCD. If I think about how that disorder’s usually portrayed, like with Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, he’s stepping over cracks and turning doorknobs, and it kind-of all leads to him being a dick. And with Tony Shaloub in Monk, OCD is played for laughs. But with MM, the show gets to the heart of the disorder and how it manifests. Did you research it much?

I did. And I also researched triggers. I knew that I needed to find, “Where can I identify what triggers this?” Because the OCD is a symptom of something equal. And when I tell you that this is the first season and also the first character where I’ve received so many DMs and people reaching out to me to thank me for how I portrayed OCD. And they suffer from it and this is the first time that they watched a portrayal of OCD that did not make them feel like they were being made fun of or laughed at or it was minimized to something so simple that didn’t incorporate the mental health behind OCD. So, I’ve taken screenshots and forwarded them all to Kripke because, you know, he’s the guy behind the pen, him and his writing team. And I try to polish off and add and stuff, but I really think that our writers got it, you know. That’s how important it is to — in a backstory when a character exhibits something — to really address the source. And it all came from trauma. It’s all trauma, and OCD is just the means of coping with that trauma.

When you mention how the show doesn’t make fun of OCD, I agree. The wet wipe stuff and Maeve putting her feet on the table — that’s a tiny slice of humor that’s just the right amount, I think.

Yeah, and then this year, we saw just how deep it gets, and we saw his daughter seeing it. Whereas before, he was able to mask it. Now, we’re starting to see his tics, like he’s gonna ring the doorbell, but he’s gotta tap it a few times. He’s driving, he’s gonna turn the turn signal on with a certain ritual first, and all these things compounded, kind-of start giving us a bigger picture of how present it is in his everyday life.

Another thing about MM is that Butcher and Hughie are going off the rails with their vengeance, but MM stays constant and steady to what he believes. We know more about him, but he’s still stayed who he is. How do you balance that?

I think that you balance it out by understanding the role on the team, and MM’s role has always been to remind The Boys that they, morality-wise, are supposed to be on the right side of this thing. The lines do get blurred, and MM is kind-of the voice of reminding, reminding, reminding. When they started doing Compound V, you have to remind them and the audience, “Don’t try this at home.” [Laughing] Although you may have a perceived reason for doing that, this ain’t the right way to do it. So, you need that Devil’s Advocate to keep us the good guys, otherwise, we’re just like the Supes. Just justifying our reason for doing it, and they’re justifying the reason for doing it. But at the end of the day, you’re at one end of the circle or the other.

Alright, so we have to talk about “Herogasm” and that scene where MM gets completely soaked. It was so funny when he complained about his jacket getting ruined, and then it really got ruined. Shooting that must have been something, so… were there multiple takes?

[Laughs] We shot it all in one take

Yeah, more than one take doesn’t seem too practical.

And it was the last take of the night. After an entire fifteen-hour day of shooting the most ridiculous stuff you can ever imagine, and we had to get it then and at that moment. We were rushing to get it. You know, it was almost something that we didn’t shoot because we had to make our day. We had to start letting people go and sending people home because we had to be back the next day and shoot other stuff. What happened was that it was the last thing where we had the house intact because the next day, we had to shoot the house as Post-Soldier Boy Blast. So the next day when we came, the house was in shambles, and that night, once we wrapped, they destroyed the house. We had to get that shot that night, and we had one shot to do it. So, they basically shot it from every angle known to man and by luck, we got it.

I’m not sure that you’ve heard about this controversy, but there are apparently far-right viewers who just realized that Homelander is actually a villain. They’re angry now, and especially because this season goes in hard against toxic masculinity. How do you feel about a group of so-called fans who just didn’t get it for awhile?

If they were able to watch Homelander for two seasons and not see him as a villain? That tells us a lot about where society is right now, and it goes back to what echo chamber that you choose to belong to. It’s unfortunate to belong to any echo chamber. In theory, we should be rational people who can call things out. Even if it’s somebody that I consider myself a fan of or a follower of, what he’s doing is not right. And the fact that we’re in a state where we can miss that? It just says a lot about what work we have to do as a society to get back to where we understand what’s right and wrong. There are certain things that should not be based upon whether you’re far-right. It shouldn’t matter if you’re far-right, far-left, or in the middle. It’s pretty obvious that if someone allows a plane full of people to crash, when you’re a “hero,” you’re America’s hero, and you let these Americans die, it should be very obvious. Yeah, this show is supposed to be a mirror to society, and if they don’t like what they saw, they should look in the mirror.

What’s wild is that Garth Ennis wrote the comics fifteen years before the show first aired, but this feels like the right time for it to land.

One-hundred percent. If you look at who he modeled Homelander after, fifteen years ago, you’ll understand why those people did not like it.

I know there was another character originally modeled after George W. Bush, but that’s not Homelander.

It was actually… Donald Trump!

I think I actually needed to block that from my mind because Trump is in too many places. I don’t need to think about him during this show!

In Garth’s interviews, he talks about creating these characters, that was the first supervillain, and he thought, “What if this person had all these powers? How would they behave?” [Laughs]

And we certainly found that out in 2016. And it’s still happening.

It’s weird how things play out.

We are outta time, but if you could take MM and give him a trip to another TV show or movie, where would you want him to go?

Oh wow. Oh man, that’s tough. Hmm, maybe Star Wars?

I can see him in The Bear. Have you seen that show?

I haven’t seen The Bear!

I keep telling everyone to watch it, so now I’m telling you that.

Where can I see it?

It’s on Hulu. It stars Jeremy Allen White from Shameless, and he plays a former fine-dining chef who goes back to run his family’s restaurant and finds out it’s more intense than expected. It’s a different kind of intense than The Boys, and I think MM could run that ship well.

Oh, I’m gonna go watch it! Thank you.

‘The Boys’ Season 3 finale is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

For the 10th time in WNBA history, one of its players will receive a signature sneaker. Puma announced on Friday morning that Seattle Storm star Breanna Stewart will become the league’s first player in a decade to have her name affiliate with a shoe when the Stewie 1 Quiet Fire drops in September.

Per Nick DePaula of ESPN and Boardroom, Stewart will debut the sneaker this weekend at the WNBA All-Star Game in Chicago.

Here are some additional images of the shoe, which includes a sharp green and black colorway with Stewart’s logo on the tongue.

“Working with Puma to craft the first women’s signature basketball sneaker in the last 12 years was an honor,” Stewart, who joins LaMelo Ball as current basketball players to have a signature Puma kick, said in a statement. “I hope that this is the first in a legacy of signature sneakers to come for women athletes across all sports and serves as inspiration for all young people that this, along with any achievement, is possible.”

Boardroom hinted that Stewart won’t just get a sneaker as part of her partnership with Puma — Ian Stonebrook writes that there will be “accompanying apparel.” Stewart, a two-time WNBA champion and one-time WNBA MVP, will appear in her fourth All-Star Game this weekend.

Over the past few months, four-man hip-hop band Coast Contra has slowly but surely seen its profile rise thanks to a string of viral freestyle videos that see the quartet sitting around a table in their studio trading bars to underground rap faves like Mobb Deep’s “Give Up The Goods,” Nas’ “Speechless,” and JID’s “Never.” Their increased notoriety landed them a performance slot on The Tonight Show last month, their debut television performance, and today, they’ve received what might be their biggest look yet as pop-R&B icon Ciara recruits them to appear on her new single “Jump.”

One of the group’s claims to fame is the raucous, upbeat energy of their back-and-forth rhymes, which harkens back to the unified flows of groups like The Furious Five, Jurassic 5, and more recently, Brockhampton. Their synchronization evokes the lock-step tightness of Ciara’s backup dancers performing the intricate choreography of hits like “Goodies,” “Dose,” or “Melanin.” And while “Jump” isn’t the best showcase for Coast Contra’s sometimes dizzying lyricism, it does showcase their tight-knight chemistry and gives a whole new audience a taste of their unique style — perhaps enough to inspire some more listening and convert a whole new fanbase.

Watch Ciara’s “Jump” video above.