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Anita Baker is a 40-year recording industry veteran and currently performing a Las Vegas residency. During her show Sunday night (May 29), she acknowledged one guest in particular: Chance The Rapper. Baker said that Chance helped her regain ownership of her master recordings from her former labels, which she’d been trying to do until last year.

“Would you guys say hello to a friend of mine by way of the music industry, by way of helping me get a hold and ownership of my master records, Mister Chance The Rapper is right there,” she said. Chance himself later reciprocated on Twitter, posting a video of the touching moment and writing, “I saw one of THE greatest performances of my LIFETIME last night! Thank you so much @IAMANITABAKER for being an inspiration and an icon to so many of US.”

Funnily enough, Chance has also had social media run-ins with other R&B legends that led to unexpected shout-outs. In 2020, Dionne Warwick playfully teased Chance over his stage name, leading to an invitation to record together. That culminated in their November 2021 collaboration “Nothing’s Impossible.”

Meanwhile, the 29-year-old rapper appears to be rolling out a new project, releasing a new single, “Child Of God,” and writing exercises such as “A Bar About A Bar” as he highlights local Chicago artists.

This upcoming August and September, Snoop Dogg was supposed to perform in Europe and the UK for his I Wanna Thank Me tour. Then, in October and November, he had a handful of Australian dates set as well. Unfortunately for fans in those regions, Snoop recently announced he has canceled those shows, although his upcoming US concerts are unaffected.

A statement Snoop shared over the weekend reads, “Due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts, including family obligations and upcoming tv and film projects, Snoop Dogg regrets he is canceling all upcoming non-US tour dates for the remainder of 2022. He was excited to see his fans around the world and apologies to all that had already made plans to see his show. He looks forward to rescheduling dates in the future. Ticket refunds will be available at the original point of purchase.”

Snoop certainly has a lot of film and TV projects in the air at the moment: On his IMDb page, upcoming projects at some point in development include Day Shift, Spoken Mirrors, All-Star Weekend, Doggyland, and Pierre The Pigeon-Hawk. Aside from that, he also has a new album, A Death Row Summer, on the way. He shared a single from the project, “Touch Away,” a couple weeks ago.

Though it may seem far-fetched to Ted Cruz and his “One Door” crusade, Bill Burr happens to think that it’s far too easy to legally obtain a gun in America and that stricter guidelines should be put in place. As Mediaite reports, the comedian/actor didn’t hold back when he recently spoke about the tragic shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on a Thursday edition of his Monday Morning Podcast.

After warning his listeners that “I’m gonna be controversial,” Burr promised that he was going to solve America’s gun crisis right there and then:

Why don’t you just do it like a pilot’s license? Like when you get a gun, like when you get like a pilot’s license, you’re flying a Cessna or whatever, you can’t just go f**king fly an American Airlines jet—you gotta work your way up.

You gotta get rated. You know, I don’t think if you get like a f**king gun license, I think the first thing you should get regardless of your f**king age is you get a little six shooter. That’s all they give you. Or maybe one of those little Saturday night specials. You get a little one shot thing. That’s all the f**k you get, right?

Then as you work your way up to more and more powerful guns that could potentially do way more f**king damage, you have to pass major, major psychological evaluations. If you do, the world is your oyster and you can have whatever f**king weapon you want. How about that? Does that work out for everybody?”

According to the Texas Tribune, the unprecedented series of mass shootings we’ve seen in America have only led to looser gun laws in the state of Texas. In 2021 alone, following back-to-back mass shootings, Lone Star State lawmakers actually made permitless carry legal, meaning that anyone who legally owns a gun in the state does not need a license to carry it in (or them) public.

Like millions of others approaching America’s gun epidemic with common sense, Burr just doesn’t seem to think that the repeated act of the Left and the Right simply yelling at each other about what should be done in the wake of a tragedy like the one in Uvalde, then ultimately doing nothing, is working:

I think the left is f**king stupid. They start yelling at people on the right. Not saying everybody on the right has a gun. Not saying everybody on the left doesn’t like guns. I’m just saying like that this f**king thing where you just start yelling at the other side.”

Just go, ‘Hey, what if we do this?’ What if we try to weed out the bad apples by doing this: As long as you’re not f**king crazy, we’ll give you a f**king bazooka. Right? And you can take it outside in your backyard and go f**king shoot at something. I don’t give a f**k. Someone would have a problem with that. ‘Oh, that’s a way to control people.’

You can listen to Burr’s full podcast below.

(Via Mediaite)

Exactly one week ago, a teenager walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and proceeded to kill 21 people, including 19 children. Fortunately, one high-powered lawmaker is taking the situation seriously enough to propose a bill that would put a cap on the sale, transfer, and import of all guns into his country. Unfortunately, that person is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who seems to understand the power of taking swift and proactive gun control measures better than any politician in America, the country that actually has the gun problem

On Monday, as CNN reports, Trudeau introduced his new bill, which would help prevent America’s gun problem from spilling over the border of our neighbors to the north.

“What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada,” Trudeau explained during a press conference. “In other words we’re capping the market.”

As The New York Times explained, if passed, the bill would work retroactively—meaning that current owners of what Canada considers ‘military-style assault weapons’ would have to rid their homes of these weapons via a government buyback program.

“Gun violence is a complex problem,” Trudeau explained. “But at the end of the day the math is really quite simple: The fewer guns in our communities, the safer everyone will be.”

According to the BBC, there are currently an estimated 120.5 firearms per every 100 residents in America, which is why you so often hear people say that we have more guns than people. Yemen has the second-highest number of civilian gun owners, but they’ve got less than half of our supply, with approximately 52.8 guns per every 100 people. In Canada, meanwhile, there are approximately 34.7 guns per every 100 citizens.

While gun control has been a major concern of Trudeau’s for several years now, particularly following a 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia that took the lives of 20 people—the deadliest in the country’s history—that is still being investigated as part of a public inquiry that has cost the country more than $25 million. Yet it’s clear that the timing of Trudeau’s bill is in reaction to the recent events in Uvalde and Buffalo, New York.

“As a government, as a society, we have a responsibility to act to prevent more tragedies,” Trudeau said on Monday, noting: “We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action, firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter.”

(Via CNN)

In a weekend dominated by Top Gun: Maverick, it’s Barry that feels the need, the need for speed (on a motorbike).

Barry has been one of the best shows of 2022, and “710N” was the season’s best episode. The HBO Max description — “What kind of guy wouldn’t want to put a hot tub up there?” — intentionally underscores the craziness that ensues: Fuches (Stephen Root) is left for dead after being shot by a member of a Motocross gang led by Traci, the sister of a deceased ex-Marine; Sally (Sarah Goldberg) joins the writers’ room on The New Medusas, a show (that replaced her own on the BanSHE homepage) about three women who run a salon in New York City, and they have snakes for hair; Vanessa Bayer makes this face; NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) is invited to co-run a beignet franchise by Mitch, my new favorite character on TV; Gene (Henry Winkler) offers at least $400,000 to Annie (Laura San Giacomo), one of the many people he’s wronged over the years, to direct his MasterClass series; and oh yeah, Barry is nearly killed by the Motocross gang. And later poisoned or drugged, but let’s focus on the dirt bikes.

After the bikers break into Barry’s house (where Nick and Jermaine are recording the world’s worst comedy special) and discover his whereabouts, Barry is surrounded by Traci and her goons on the way to a dinner thrown by Sharon, the widow of Barry’s ex-military friend Chris who he shot in the head. “I think this is the guy. Is this the guy?” the bikers wonder while a confused Barry looks on inside his car. It finally clicks what’s happening — or about to happen — when Traci suggests that they shoot him. What follows is an incredible six-minute chase sequence through Los Angeles.

Look at Bill Hader’s getaway car face:

Barry screeches away from the bikers in a residential neighborhood — until one of them goes straight through his window. Following a quick exchange of looks with a mailman, Barry trades his car for a bike. He thinks he’s clear to make it to Sharon’s house for a dinner party uninterrupted (he even continues singing a song that Hader improvised), but Barry is spotted by the other members of the gang, who follow him onto a gridlocked expressway. There are no quick cuts or cheats in the editing; the camera patiently follows Barry from overhead, giving us an eagle eye look as Barry weaves through traffic. (I’m sure some of the chase involved computer trickery, but I honestly can’t tell which parts, if so.) I held my breath while Barry was whooshing past the cars, expecting him to go flying. Instead, that happens to a biker after whiffing on a firearm handoff.

The action continues at a car dealership, where the owner, Mr. Kleintop, is interrupted during a TMI pitch (“You know, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but, uh, recently, I’ve been, the wife and I, I’ve been having an affair”) by Traci driving on the roof and opening fire at Barry. “Ah, f*ck. No f*cking way. Not today, not today,” Mr. Kleintop says, sounding like a Tim Robinson character, as he runs inside and grabs his gun. He blasts two shots to kill the biker as Barry slinks away from the chaos, precious beignets in hand.

Like last season’s triumphant “ronny/lily,” “710N” — which was directed by Hader himself and written by Duffy Boudreau — is everything Barry does well: it’s laugh out loud funny, tense, violent, weird but grounded, unpredictable, and utterly unique. Note the lack of music during the Fury Road-inspired expressway chase. If Barry stunt coordinator Wade Allen had been left to his own devices, “there’s a good chance there would be some kind of Metallica soundtrack. It would be motocross porn and stunts, and it would be awesome,” he told Primetimer. “But Bill had this notion of how he wanted it covered and how he wanted it to sound, and it ultimately elevated the entire piece in a very different way.” He continued, “That’s what makes the show work. You never know when you’re going to make the switch. Are we staying serious the whole time, or are we going to get funny right now, out of nowhere?”

That master of genre-switching is what separates Barry from other action-comedies. They often fail because the jokes are fine but the action isn’t impressive, or the action is the highlight but the jokes fall flat. Or sometimes both stink. Barry excels at action and comedy (and heart-wrenching drama) in every episode, but especially “710N.”

Forget Mr. Cousineau, let Bill Hader teach a MasterClass.

Former child actor turned right-wing televangelist Kirk Cameron is back with a new hot take on schools. The Growing Pains star is getting roasted on social media for pushing his newest film, The Homeschool Awakening, which urges conservative parents to pull their kids out of public schools where they’re being exposed to — you guessed it — “grooming.”

Since the creation of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida, “grooming” has been very loosely tossed around to define anyone who dare to think it’s okay that LGBTQ+ teachers and students simply exist. As a far-right provocateur, naturally, Cameron latched onto the phrase to promote his new film and attack public schools, which he also says spread “sexual chaos.”

Via Fox News:

“The problem is that public school systems have become so bad. It’s sad to say they’re doing more for grooming, for sexual chaos and the progressive left than any real educating about the things that most of us want to teach our kids,” he told Fox News Digital. The solution to the problem, he said, was for parents to take the lead on their children’s education and teach them at home. To make the case, the award-winning actor referenced his upcoming movie, “The Homeschool Awakening.”

Following the Uvalde school shooting, some conservatives have been saying that the solution to protecting students is to home school them, which is clearly not realistic for millions of working families. So Cameron wading into the already contentious topic did not go over well, and there’s been significant pushback to his hypocritical assault on public schools.

You can see some of the reactions below:

(Via Fox News)

Vladimir Putin’s imperialistic war on Ukraine isn’t going as planned, all after he thought that Russian troops could immediately descend and swiftly rise victorious. Instead, molotov cocktail-wielding grandmas have illustrated the will of the Ukrainian people, as has President Volodymyr Zelensky’s refusal to be airlifted out. Months later (and with massive loss of life on both ends), Putin has fired over 100 FSB Secret Agents over his embarrassment, and reports indicate that Putin’s inner circle is maneuvering to install a successor in light of the ongoing disastrous, dismal conflict.

As for the Russian troops, many of them weren’t even aware of formal directions or why they were sent to impose Putin’s will upon the Ukraine people. It’s a move that has left the Russian people in economic tatters due to near-global sanctions, and Business Insider now points toward a phone call, reportedly between a Russian soldier and his wife. The audio was published on YouTube by Ukraine’s Secret Services and translated by Business Insider. Here’s how the soldier narrated the near-debacle on the battle field when the battery declined to follow an order from Gen. Valeriy Solodchuk:

“Almost all of our battery refused. He [Solodchuk] started waving his gun and shooting … He says ‘I’ll whack you if you don’t f*cking go there! …’,” the man says in the recording.

“Then, a kid says to him: ‘Go ahead, whack!’ F*ck, he pulled out a grenade, pulled a pin and says: ‘Come on, shoot me! We’ll blow up together.’ That’s it. The special forces guys also started pointing their guns at us. So, we pointed our guns at them.”

“In short, we almost shot each other, for f*ck’s sake. He got on his bobik [a type of Russian Jeep] and left,” the voice said.

The frustrated soldier then added, “Our brigade can’t capture anything because there’s f*cking nothing left of it.”

It’s certainly a sobering reminder of how Putin’s ego pushed him to launch a war that his army wasn’t prepared for, nor do some of them appear to be onboard at this point. And the resulting clash has not only left Putin without his Botox supply, but also with a failed silly parade to celebrate a victory that hasn’t happened in Ukraine.

You can listen to the non-translated audio footage above.

(Via Business Insider)

ASAP Rocky and Rihanna welcomed a baby boy last month. Ahead of the birth, Rocky spoke with Dazed about Rihanna (whom he calls the “love of my life”), new music, and how he envisions his and Rih’s family.

When speaking on his children, Rocky revealed hopes that his future children are just as creative and imaginative as their parents.

“I will always remind my children to never lose their imagination, even as adults, no matter what,” Rocky said. “I actually love to watch cartoons — I’ve watched, like, Teletubbies, Blue’s Clues, Yo Gabba Gabba, Peppa Pig, and Baby Shark. I hope to raise open-minded children. Not people who discriminate. And I’m not trying to describe a saint, but realistically, I just want a cool child with cool parents.”

Though the two only confirmed their romance last year, Rocky and Rihanna have collaborated on projects for over a decade. Rocky recruited Rih to appear in his 2013 music video for “Fashion Killa,” and both of them have been praised for their innovative sense of fashion.

When asked about their iconic looks and sense of individualism in fashion, Rocky said, “I think it’s just natural. We happen to look good together naturally. You know, it would take a lot of work to have us forcefully match before we leave the house. Sometimes we match to a T, or we just wear the same clothes. If I buy a shirt that she likes, I expect to get it stolen… but then I gotta steal it back.”

Kanye West is always trying something new and one of his latest ventures is Donda Sports, a marketing agency to represent athletes. Donda Sports recently bagged a major signee, as eight-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Aaron Donald is now on board. The NFL star recently made the reveal and noted that he actually turned down the chance to be in one of his new boss’ music videos.

In a recent episode of the I Am Athlete podcast (as USA Today notes), Donald said of Ye, “He’s cool, man. He’s real cool, a cool dude. Got to talk a little bit. Vibe. Was at one of his video shoots. He actually wanted me to get in one of the videos, but I was like, ‘Nah.’ I was out of my element. But he was cool. He seemed cool. Real cool guy.”

He also noted of the Donda Sports signing, “It was an opportunity that came to us, me and [my wife], and it made sense. And hearing the whole spectrum of everything that’s going on and what they were going to be bringing, the family atmosphere that they got in Donda Sports. Not just me, but my wife being a part of that. For me, it was a no-brainer.”

One of the great moments in Twitter history was the time Russell Crowe was not having any of Clickhole‘s rubbish. After The Onion spin-off website published a fake quote from the Master and Commander star as part of their “They Said What?!” series, Crowe tweeted, “@Clickhole what is this rubbish? Where does that quote from?” Beautiful.

Elon Musk v. Hard Drive is no Russell Crowe v. Clickhole.

Over the weekend, The Onion of video games called out the Tesla founder for posting a picture from one of the site’s articles without attribution. “hey i’ll give u a horse if u stop cropping our name off our articles,” @HardDriveMag tweeted, a reference to Musk reportedly offering a SpaceX flight attendant a horse in exchange for an erotic massage. Musk (who thinks of himself as a memelord even though he’s more of a meme lifter) replied, “Well, if you make something that looks like a meme & someone (not me) crops off your name, so it goes. Also, this is only a 6/10 meme, so maybe step down from that high horse! The selfless art of anonymous meme creators is something to be admired.”

Hard Drive fired back by asking for Musk’s thoughts on an article with the headline “Elon Musk Admits He Wants to Travel to Mars Because No One Hates Him There Yet,” to which the real-life Kendall Roy tweeted, “Less funny than SNL on a bad day. This could make a drunk person sober. Try harder!” Musk really set himself up here.

Musk deleted the original meme and got buried. To paraphrase Russell Crowe, we are entertained.

(Via Hard Drive)