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Rapper Bobby Shmurda has sparked a conversation around the cost of instrumental tracks. Earlier this week, the “Hot N****” rapper took to Instagram to express his frustration with music producers, who he feels are overcharging for beats.

“These producers is giving me the hardest time right now,” said Shmurda in a video. “I’ve never seen no sh*t like this before. I done made over half a million for the year, it can’t be that bad outside.”

Shmurda, who is in the middle of working on a new project, also admitted he feels annoyed by the process of clearing samples. In response to his rant, producer Boi-1da, who is largely known for his work with Drake, took to the comments of a post by 2Cool2Blog to explain why beats are so expensive.

“Designer beats cost designer bread,” said Boi-1da.

Additionally, producer Cardo, who is known for his work with Drake, Travis Scott, and Baby Keem, took to Twitter to defend they high cost of beats.

“I’m just speaking up for the producer community… that’s all,” Cardo said. “No complaining of any sort … but y’all will not continue to try and step on [producers] over here. Cuz Im fasho with the bullsh*t. Just ask around.”

Philadelphia 76ers part owner Michael Rubin is looking to sell his share of the team and Rick Ross wants in. On Wednesday, June 22, Rubin announced his impending departure from the ownership group, citing the growing responsibilities of his ownership of the Fanatics brand. With Fanatics launching a sports-betting division in the near future (a conflict of interest for anyone working in sports, let alone owning a team), Rubin is choosing his burgeoning business over his fandom. He explained the decision in a statement that he also posted on Instagram.

It didn’t take long for the business-minded Rick Ross to chime in in the comments, writing “I’ll buy his 10% lol.” While the “lol” implies that he’s joking, a lot of truth is said in jest. It would certainly make sense for Ross to cop a portion of a sports team. He’s a fixture courtside at his hometown Miami Heat games, he often makes savvy business decisions, and he’s certainly been cutting costs across the board, so he might just have the capital to buy in — provided he can put together an investment group to cover the difference. With a reported net worth of $45 million, he’s got a ways to go to reach the reported value of Rubin’s share, which has certainly grown from when the owner purchased it for $290 million in 2011. Maybe Jay-Z or Meek Mill can help out.

In response to the 2016 shooting at Orlando nightclub Pulse, Kevin Morby shared a single called “Beautiful Strangers,” a song about gun violence. Sales of the song benefited Everytown For Gun Safety, which pushes for stronger gun laws. Now, Morby has revisited the song, presumably as a response to the recent Uvalde school shooting, by performing it on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night.

On the song, Morby sings, “If you ever hear that gunshot, you may think ’bout what you do but you don’t got / Say a prayer, think of mother, I am a rock / If you ever hear that sound now / If the door gets kicked in here, they come now / Think of others, be their cover / I am what they’re not.”

Morby previously said of the song upon its release, “This release is dedicated to and written for all the people I have never met but have only read about. The innocent people who were out living their lives and one day, without warning, had them taken away from them. People who liked to laugh, dance, and love in the way that we all do, but can’t anymore. All those names and faces, all those beautiful strangers…”

The YouTube upload of the “Beautiful Strangers” performance has also been set as a fundraiser, featuring a button to donate to the Everytown For Gun Safety Support Fund.

“Beautiful Strangers” was Morby’s second Kimmel performance of the night, following the This Is A Photograph title track.

Watch Morby’s performance of “Beautiful Strangers” above and “This Is A Photograph” below.

Despite initially backing away from Dave Chappelle after his controversial comedy special, The Closer, sparked online backlash and an employee walkout, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos doubled down on his defense of the comedian and Ricky Gervais. Both comics have been criticized for repeatedly joking about the transgender community, and Sarandos made it clear that Netflix has no interest in censoring them or any comics with similar material.

While attending the “Future of Entertainment” panel at Cannes Lion, Sarandos defending Netflix’s decision to carry Chappelle and Gervais’ stand-up material. “We’ve always been a supporter of the art,” the CEO said before launching into a longer statement about how the streaming platform will vigorously fight any form of censorship. Via Deadline:

“Part of the art form is to cross the line, and part of the art form means you only find where the line is by crossing it sometimes. Supporting expression is really important.”

He added it was “almost impossible” to censor Chapelle despite the backlash against him, saying Netflix would “fight” for his content “all the way to the Supreme Court.” Sarandos noted the streamer had “never taken [Chappelle’s special] down anywhere in the world.”

“Diversity of thought, expression, is super important to defend. It’s good for culture, it’s good for society — not just for the U.S. but everywhere.”

Sarandos’ full-throated defense of Chappelle and Gervais is not the only interesting development for Netflix over the past 24 hours. Shortly before Sarandos’ Cannes Lion appearance, the streamer launched Snowflake Mountain, a reality series where eight young contestants who are “overly emotional, easily offended, and dramatic” are sent off into the wilderness to learn survival skills from combat veterans.

You can see the trailer below:

The launch of Snowflake Mountain coupled with Sarandos’ doubling down on Chappelle and Gervais seemingly suggests that Netflix is ramping up content for the “anti-woke” crowd, for lack of a better term. The streaming platform has already seen its stock price plummet due to losing subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, and it’s projected to lose even more in the second quarter. Granted, it just had a smash hit with Stranger Things 4, but that series won’t return for its final season for at least a year if not more. Until then, Netflix will have to find a way to secure subscribers, and appealing to the “owning the libs” crowd could be part of the plan.

(Via Deadline, The Daily Beast)

Fans of South Park know all about Denver-area restaurant Casa Bonita and its outdoor fountain. The show’s creators made sure of that by making it one of Cartman’s favorite places. But when the restaurant finally gets reopened it may be missing at least one iconic structure from the infamous episode that sparked interest in its real-life fate last year.

In the summer of 2021, news stories about Casa Bonita drew the attention of South Park showrunners Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The duo had actually featured the Mexican-themed restaurant in an episode, but in real life the COVID-19 pandemic had shuttered the establishment, which was then put up for sale.

Parker and Stone announced their intentions to buy it and followed through later in the year, and what’s followed has been a flurry of renovations and construction with plans to reopen. But that process has apparently cost the Colorado icon its beloved fountain in the process. According to the Denver Post, the fountain outside of the restaurant purchased by the South Park creators had to be demolished due to structural issues. Though the waterfall, according to the report, will be back soon enough:

Following safety concerns from a crumbling foundation, the water feature has been razed but will be rebuilt, according to the Lakewood Planning Department.

A representative for the Lakewood office said the city expects to receive plans soon for a new fountain structure to be built.

The Denver Post story about the razing includes photos of the construction underway at the beloved institution, and it looks like Parker and Stone are making good on their promise to modernize the place and get it back up and running. We’ll have to wait and see what the new fountain looks like as the reimagined Casa Bonita takes shape, but it’s good to see the South Park guys are serious about making a local landmark as good as new once more.

[via Denver Post]

The Umbrella Academy is a show that’s constantly reinventing itself. It’s a necessity, that practice of metamorphosis. When every season ends with an apocalyptic event that scatters your main characters to the four corners of the timeline, you’ve got to get creative.

In season three, streaming now on Netflix, showrunner Steve Blackman does that by introducing an entirely new squad of supernaturally powered weirdos, The Sparrow Academy. While the Umbrella crew has been thwarting presidential assassinations, tangling with The Commission, and trying to make it out of the ’60s without destroying the world (again), these guys have basically become The Avengers of their time. They pose the first real threat the Hargreeves clan has faced that didn’t come from within and Blackman uses them this season to test, push, and eventually evolve the family dynamics that are at the core of his story.

Of course, he does that while also pulling inspiration from the comics written by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba, injecting callbacks and cleverly hidden Easter eggs he’s hoping fans will eventually find. But this season, perhaps more than any other, feels like a genre vehicle he’s firmly behind the wheel of, one that rides the line between respectful adaptation and non-canon originality in a way other shows will likely be envious of.

UPROXX chatted with Blackman about being inspired by — but not beholden to — the show’s comic book origins, working with Elliot Page to transition his character on screen, and how The Umbrella Academy has influenced the trajectory of superhero shows.

There’s so much story to tell with these comics and with these characters. When you sat down to write this season, where did you start?

I’m very close with Gerard [Way] and Gabriel [Ba]. They’re very nice guys and very generous and have understood that there are two different mediums here. The TV show does not have to be the graphic novel. And in fact, they’re becoming a bit symbiotic, where some of the things we do now are influencing where Gerard and Gabriel are going. But as a starting point, I want to be respectful of the source material. I look it over, and Gerard always tells me where he thinks he’s going. He’s writing the next volume. It’s not done. He’s thought about the one after that. Sometimes it’s just too hard to translate into TV. There are elements of the last graphic novel that I loved but we couldn’t have afforded to do them.

So I try to, whenever I can, pay homage or find inspiration in the source material. And I know, of course, there’s the purist graphic novel people who say it should be exact. But I think what we’ve done over the years has brought a big audience in and converted a lot of the graphic novel fans who’ve accepted this as its own sort of version of Umbrella Academy. Plus, people who have never even heard of the graphic novel have now come together. But I’m very respectful of the guys. I always want them to feel that they have a say and a voice in some of the ideas that I do that are just very different than what they’ve done to the graphic novel.

You’re basically recreating the starting premise of season one by introducing this new family, The Sparrows.

Yeah. This is how I thought about it: The Umbrella Academy was a family that never knew how to be superheroes, and the Sparrows are superheroes that never knew how to be a family. So we get to see a little bit of the ‘What if?’ The Umbrellas broke up at around 16 years old. They blew apart, had lives for many years and they only came back for the dad’s funeral. The Sparrows have stayed together a very long time and they’re not in a very good place, even though they’ve perfected the art of being superheroes. They have a lot of similarities. They’re all broken and really, they’re quite relatable in some ways. I don’t think they see that initially [but] they come to know that better later on.

Are the Sparrows just an antagonistic plot device to push the Umbrellas forward or will the two groups maybe work together by the end of this?

I think the latter. Obviously from a storytelling point of view, it forces our family to either decide to work together or not. There are seven Sparrows. If the odds become really stacked against them and they don’t work together, then it can become one or two of them. So working together is in their survival favor. But I also think they’re not all bad — the Sparrows. I think they’ve also suffered similar traumas. There was a lot of story to service this year and I have to concentrate more on our Umbrellas than the Sparrows. If I had more time and more episodes, I think we could have delved a little deeper into more layers of the Sparrows.

Speaking of character growth, the show did something really beautiful this season by letting Vanya’s character grow, eventually becoming Viktor after Elliot Page transitioned. What went into crafting that storyline?

The scripts were finished when Elliot called me and talked about his transition. And to be honest with you, I didn’t know a lot. So I called GLAAD and talked to a guy named Nick Adams there. And I also connected with a trans writer named Thomas McNee who was sort of instrumental in guiding me. And of course, Elliot was part of that process. It was important to not try to pretend as a cis man that I understood it the way [Elliot and Thomas did]. And I didn’t understand it. I’m still learning about it by the way, through Elliot. It was so important for me that the story feel authentic and real. At the same time, we didn’t want it to take over the show. We didn’t want to make it the story.

Right.

So the challenge for me as showrunner was, how do I write that in and not let it overtake everything? Ultimately talking to Elliot and Thomas, we concluded that families can accept people. And this family, they accept differences. So we wrote a story about acceptance and we wanted to put a pro-trans message out in the world. There’s a lot of negativity towards trans kids in the south right now. So it’s very important to tell a message about acceptance.

What was it like shooting that day?

There were tears on set. It was a really beautiful moment because we all love Elliot. We’ve been with Elliot for five years now and we’ve seen some struggles. I think, and this is just my opinion, I’m not quoting Elliot here, but after Elliot got the haircut and Vanya became Victor, I just felt there was a weight off the shoulders of even the character of Victor, the way he walked around, the way he interacted. And it sort of was just a really beautiful moment for the cast and crew. It’s one of the most touching. I get a little verklempt thinking about it.

The show manages to make every season look and feel unique, no matter the time period. Did you pull any inspiration from other works of film or TV when building the sets this year?

Absolutely, we do. I have a lot of ideas that I go to my production designer Carrie Myron say, ‘This is sort of what I want the hotel to look like,’ and he’ll start sketching. But if you are a big fan and you like Easter eggs, there are a lot of homages to Wes Anderson. There’s definitely some Kubrick in there. I won’t give away which Kubrick film, but you probably can get a sense of it. There’s Barton Fink in it this year, and we’ll tell you how that fits in. That’s the Coen brothers. We love sort of getting inspired by our favorite filmmakers and trying to put those elements in the set and hide them in places. And by the way, the fans find everything. I’m like, ‘There’s no way they’re going to catch that.’

And then they’ve figured it out after a weekend of binge-watching.

A couple are really hidden this year. So let’s see if they get them all by Monday.

Everyone’s going to be enjoying season three, but are you already thinking ahead to what comes next?

Gerard is at the end of the comics now. I think he’s writing the next volume. So we’re at a place that’s a little more precarious, but I’ve already planned season four. I pitched it to Netflix. It’s not picked up yet, but I know what season four is. I know where it begins and ends. And if we get a pickup, I will then sit down with Gerard and say, ‘How does that fit with where you’re going?’ And that’s where the process begins for us. But I have a great idea with season four.

Comic book stories on TV and film seem to be getting weirder, a bit more creative. Do you think you guys had any kind of influence on that?

I would like to think we did. Believe it or not, it is almost five years ago now when we started. There was great Marvel stuff and great DC stuff. The Boys was coming on the air. But I still think we’re something different. To me, we’re a dysfunctional family show first. I don’t see this as a superhero show. This is the Wes Anderson Royal Tenenbaum family [of superheroes]. That’s our difference.

But I do now see that people are also being inspired by what we’ve done. You’re seeing a lot more subversive superheroes with comedy and some of them are very good. Maybe we weren’t the first, but we definitely had an influence on this type of [storytelling], the way we subverted this genre, and where it’s going to go in the future. And there are a lot of places to go.

Season 3 of The Umbrella Academy is streaming now on Netflix.

Katy Perry — as a famous pop star who frequently reaches No. 1 on the charts — is used to getting recognized in public. But in Australia, the “Part Of Me” singer was wearing sunglasses and a hat at a café over the weekend, and worker Indianna Paull told her that there were no seats available.

“She handled it like any normal person would, I suppose,” Paull said in an interview with Australian morning show Sunrise. “She was really nice the whole time and she handled it like a champ. I think partly because I didn’t recognize her was the reason she was so just so relaxed and chill about it. I made a fool out of myself and said, ‘For future reference, we don’t usually seat people in this table.’”

After Paull’s manager informed her on who she was serving, she was stunned.

“I just went red and went limp at the knees,” she said. “I probably didn’t need to, but I felt like a fool, so I went over to her table and apologized. I don’t know why, I just felt shocked that I had acted like she was a casual Joe Blow!” She added, “In hindsight, I think the reason she wanted to get in so bad is because people were running around taking photos of her — I was so oblivious, running around like a headless chook, I had no idea.”

Paull says that Perry left a big tip and even “asked for my name and had a conversation with me and as she left she walked through the café and gave me a hug and was just really nice to everyone.”

Many of 2022’s most-anticipated shows have already premiered (Stranger Things, Hacks, the Muppets episode of Holey Moley), but don’t forget about Documentary Now!. The mockumentary series on IFC, created by Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and Rhys Thomas, is “basically perfect,” although you can get rid of the qualifier for season three’s “Original Cast Album: Co-Op”: it is perfect (more like Richard KING).

The episode was written by Meyers and John Mulaney, who worked on another episode for season four. It’s based on Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, which the comedian described on Late Night with Seth Meyers as a “narrative film” about his “actual film crew [moving] a steamship over the mountains of part of the Amazon River, which was very hard and crazy to do.” There’s also a very good documentary about the making of the film, Burden of Dreams. The Documentary Now! episode stars Alexander Skarsgård as a “Werner Herzog-type who is trying to make a CBS network multicam in the middle of suburbia.” He has to “fly in a studio audience from Van Nuys, Calfornia” to make it work.

Move over, Better Call Saul series finale. This Documentary Now! episode is suddenly the TV event of the year. You can watch the Mulaney interview above.

Hello, there! Obi-Wan Kenobi is hot and we love him. Throughout the now many decades of Star Wars (will it ever end etc.), we have seen the Jedi Master in many forms: old man, snarky Padawan, sassy general, meme extraordinaire, sad boy. In honor of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who has the titular role in Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, here is a ranking of every iteration of Obi-Wan Kenobi, from films to television shows. There isn’t much rhyme or reason to this ranking other than performance, personality, and, perhaps most importantly, hair.

8. Star Wars Rebels (2014-2018) Obi-Wan

Obi-Wan makes a brief appearance in the animated series Star Wars: Rebels. Obi-Wan Kenobi (voiced to near perfection by Stephen Stanton) is almost exactly as he was originally introduced in the original Star War wars film: an old, wise man and mentor with a white beard living in exile on Tattooine. Basically, he’s animated Alec Guinness. The animation style gives him sharper edges that make Obi-Wan look kind of mean. Still love him, though, but last place is where this Obi-Wan belongs.

7. Return of the Jedi (1983) Obi-Wan (Force Ghost)

At the end of Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi appears as a Force ghost which is, apparently, different from a normal ghost. Blue and slightly transparent. Force ghosts are nice and a perfect device for emotional moments, but it does not seem like Obi-Wan’s force ghost can do much besides standing in the distance, staring at Luke Skywalker and his friends.

6. The Phantom Menace (1999) Obi-Wan

The Phantom Menace introduced us to Ewan McGregor’s now-iconic Obi-Wan Kenobi. It wasn’t the best of introductions, though. We all went through an awkward phase when we were teens and young adults, and Obi-Wan Kenobi is no exception. As a young Padawan, Obi-Wan had to have the same haircut as everybody else. His face looked good, but the cut wasn’t the right fit. Young Obi-Wan is a little snarky (“the negotiations were short”) and incredibly rude to droids, but he’s defiant to authority and fiercely loyal to his closest allies. Even though Obi-Wan in Phantom Menace is dozens of parsecs away from who he is by A New Hope, McGregor captured Gunniess’ essence without mimicking him. If Obi-Wan had a better haircut, maybe The Phantom Menace wouldn’t be so bad?

5. The Clone Wars (2008-2020) Obi-Wan

Being attracted to a cartoon is wrong when it’s Space Jam’s Lola Bunny, but it’s completely fine when it is Obi-Wan Kenobi in the television series The Clone Wars. The Clone Wars gives an even deeper, quite necessary look into the brotherly bond between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi (voiced by James Arnold Taylor), which enhances the overall story, particularly Obi-Wan’s pain after leaving Anakin for dead. On Clone Wars, Obi-Wan is a little bit arrogant and sometimes straight-up rude but his clever quips – often at the expense of his enemies or Anakin – make him hot. I mean… interesting.

4. Attack of the Clones (2002) Obi-Wan

Obi-Wan in his Jesus era. In Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan has a glow, as if the sun at golden hour is always in front of him. His hair is softer than Baby Grogu coos, his eyes glisten like the Tatooine moons. But it’s not just Obi-Wan’s hair that has evolved since Phantom Menace. Obi-Wan is a little more likely to listen to authority, but he’s a little sassier.

3. Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) Obi-Wan

The Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi focuses on a broken and emotional Obi-Wan Kenobi years after his life as he knew it is over. Obi-Wan lives with undiagnosed PTSD in a cave on Tattoine and has grown bitter as a result of the Empire massacring Jedi and taking over the galaxy. The sassy, slightly rebellious Obi-Wan who could make light of any moment is gone. For the first time in his life, he is hesitant to help anyone because the person he tried to help the most, Anakin Skywalker, is the reason all of this happened in the first place. But he helps a young Princess Leia and is basically a rugged daddy now. On Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi has slightly disgusting Kendall Roy sad boy energy that is, for some reason, irresistible.

2. Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) Obi-Wan

Sir Alec Guinness is the Obi-Wan Kenobi blueprint. In his performance in Star Wars, which earned him an Oscar nomination (the only Star Wars performance to do so and, honestly, probably the only one that will ever do so) Guinness brought a mysterious edge to the old guy mentor who dies trope that made the character compelling enough to return in so many Star Wars stories. He also looks good doing it.

1. Revenge of the Sith (2005) Obi-Wan

By Revenge of the Sith, Ewan McGregor assimilated into the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi so well that it looks like he is floating in his signature Jedi robes. Years of training the unpredictable and moody Anakin Skywalker as well as fighting in the Clone Wars have turned Obi-Wan Kenobi into a meme king. He’s sassier than ever, but most importantly he has a new haircut that makes his hair look good enough to eat. Revenge of the Sith is McGregor’s best performance as the character because, for the first time, it shows an emotional Obi-Wan. The pain Obi-Wan experiences in Revenge of the Sith completes the character and the Skywalker saga.

In New York, where I grew up, Wheel of Fortune airs before Jeopardy!. In Texas, where I live now, Jeopardy! comes on before Wheel of Fortune. This is the second worst thing about living in Texas (don’t worry, Ted, you’re number one).

Wheel of Fortune should always air before Jeopardy! because, as current-host Ken Jennings once tweeted, “it’s appetizer – main course.” The silly delights of Wheel of Fortune prepare you for Jeopardy!, which is the “smart” game show — although that supposed intelligence isn’t always on display.

The “Final Jeopardy” category during Wednesday’s episode was “19th Century Literature.” The clue read, “This author first thought of a parrot before choosing another bird ‘equally capable of speech.’” Here’s how it appeared on screen:

So far, so good. But then:

The correctly spelled “equally” now reads “equallly.” A typo isn’t a big deal (and it was cleaned up in the version uploaded to YouTube), but the spelling error is rich coming from a show that recently punished a contestant for an illegible answer. In that case, it was Megan Wachspress who took advantage of the controversial decision. She wasn’t as lucky during Wednesday’s episode: her six-day winning streak came to an end by Jeff Weinstock, a marketing lecturer from Miami, Florida. They both correctly answered “who is Edgar Allan Poe?” but his $11,202 in Final Jeopardy trumped Wachspress’ $7,001.

But with all respect to Jeff, his win isn’t what Jeopardy! fans buzzing.

Jeopardy!: where nothing could possi-blye go wrong.