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Last summer, Diddy announced that he is putting out an R&B album, as well as launching an R&B-focused music label. Today, he officially revealed the label’s name, Love Records. The label was started in partnership with Motown Records, and Diddy’s upcoming album will be its first release. According to a statement from the label in Variety, the focus will initially be to “release singles and collaborative projects from a collective of world-class artists, producers, and songwriters.”

Diddy previously cited his inspiration in launching the new label, saying, “I feel like R&B was abandoned and it’s a part of our African American culture.” Meanwhile, he also intends to try a new business model, rather than locking artists into deals for a cut of the profits. “I’m not signing any artists,” he said. “Because if you know better, you do better. I’m doing 50–50 partnerships with pure transparency.”

The music mogul has had plenty of experience in the arena of R&B. Before launching the label for which he’s best known, Bad Boy, he A&Red projects from the likes of Jodeci and Mary J. Blige at Uptown Records. That experience should serve him well as he and Love Records — which he’s sort of named after himself — prepare for the release of his first album in seven years, Off The Grid Vol. 1.

In September 2020, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings vowed that the streaming service would stay ad-free. Then Insatiable-gate happened, and everything changed. Amidst rising subscription costs, password crackdowns, and employee walkouts, Netflix may soon offer an ad-supported subscription plan — much sooner, in fact, than anyone expected.

The New York Times reports that “Netflix could introduce its lower-priced ad-supported tier by the end of the year, a more accelerated timeline than originally indicated, the company told employees in a recent note… Netflix executives said that they were aiming to introduce the ad tier in the final three months of the year.” The letter also revealed that the extra cost for password sharing could go into effect around the same time.

Netflix currently offers a variety of payment tiers to access its streaming service; its most popular plan costs $15.49 a month. The new ad-supported tier will cost less. Other streaming services have similar plans. HBO Max, for instance, offers a commercial-free service for $15 a month, and charges $10 a month for the service with advertising.

“Every major streaming company excluding Apple has or has announced an ad-supported service,” the note reads. “For good reason, people want lower-priced options.” They also want more The Baby-Sitters Club and less cake-focused game shows, but I guess it’s too late for that.

(Via the New York Times)

Over the weekend, teasers made it seem like Tama Impala and Diana Ross were perhaps making an album together. It turns out that’s only sort-of-but-not-really true: They are appearing on an album together, yes, but that album is the soundtrack to the upcoming Minions: The Rise Of Gru movie, the full tracklist of which has now been revealed.

Their contribution is a collaborative new song called “Turn Up The Sunshine.” The 19-track album mostly consists of covers, but other originals include “Cool” from Verdine White (of Earth, Wind & Fire), RZA’s “Kung Fu Suite,” and Heitor Pereira’s “Minions: The Rise Of Gru Score Suite.”

As for the covers, they’re all of songs from the ’70s, coinciding with the movie’s setting. Selections include St. Vincent doing Lipps, Inc’s “Funkytown”; Thundercat doing Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like An Eagle”; Phoebe Bridgers doing The Carpenters’ “Goodbye To Love”; and Brockhampton doing Kool & The Gang’s “Hollywood Swinging.”

Check out the Minions: The Rise Of Gru (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) art and tracklist below.

1. Diana Ross — “Turn Up The Sunshine” Feat. Tame Impala
2. Brittany Howard — “Shining Star” Feat. Verdine White (Earth, Wind & Fire cover)
3. St. Vincent — “Funkytown” (Lipps, Inc. cover)
4. Brockhampton — “Hollywood Swinging” (Kool & The Gang cover)
5. Kali Uchis — “Desafinado” (Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto cover)
6. Caroline Polachek — “Bang Bang” (Nancy Sinatra cover)
7. Thundercat — “Fly Like An Eagle” (Steve Miller Band cover)
8. Phoebe Bridgers — “Goodbye To Love” (The Carpenters cover)
9. Bleachers — “Instant Karma!” (John Lennon cover)
10. Weyes Blood — “You’re No Good” (Linda Ronstadt cover)
11. Gary Clark Jr. — “Vehicle” (The Ides Of March cover)
12. HER — “Dance To The Music” (Sly & The Family Stone cover)
13. Tierra Whack — “Black Magic Woman” (Santana cover)
14. Verdine White — “Cool”
15. Jackson Wang — “Born To Be Alive” (Patrick Hernandez cover)
16. The Minions — “Cecilia” (Simon & Garfunkel cover)
17. GEM — “Bang Bang” (Nancy Sinatra cover)
18. RZA — “Kung Fu Suite”
19. Heitor Pereira — “Minions: The Rise Of Gru Score Suite”

Minions: The Rise Of Gru (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is out 5/20 via Decca.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have been through a lot together. Though they began working together on Saturday Night Live in 2001, they originally met back in the early 1990s, and have continued to be part of each other’s lives ever since. On Saturday night, as The Hollywood Reporter wrote, the comedic duo sat down to discuss both their personal and professional lives for an “In Conversation” event that closed out the Netflix Is a Joke Festival.

The topics they discussed for the 75-minute event varied, but were dictated by a series of prompts written on paper and stuffed into a bunch of bowls. The first question turned out to be a great one: Who is the most famous person to ever hit on you?

While Poehler joked that John McCain seemed to take a liking to her (no doubt Meghan McCain will find a way to bring that up and make it all about her), Fey shared a rather bizarre story that left her utterly confused. “This is the kind of weird thing that used to happen to me,” she said. “One time when he was hosting SNL, at the after-party, it was late and Kevin Spacey tried to hit on me. I was like, ‘Who is this for? Who is this little performance for?’”

Fey’s confusion at the unexpected flirtation is understandable. Though Spacey’s sexuality was the object of much speculation for many years, the actor refused to comment on the topic, which seemed to only make some people more interested in the answer. It wasn’t until 2017, after Star Trek: Discovery star Anthony Rapp claimed that when he was just 14 years old, Spacey attempted to seduce him in an inappropriate and somewhat aggressive manner.

Spacey didn’t do himself any favors when, by way of apologizing to Rapp, came out as gay. As if that explained the reason behind what Spacey himself described as “deeply inappropriate drunken behavior” toward a teenager.

As for Fey and Poehler, they shared that while they generally go for different types of guys, they do have one shared crush: 1970s John Travolta. “He can get it,” Poehler said.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

In a new interview with Vogue, Dua Lipa opened up about meditation, life on tour, and growing up in Kosovo. Finally touring after the release of her sophomore album, Future Nostalgia, Lipa is enjoying the states, including taking yoga classes in Beverley Hills and eating barbecue in Houston, the latter city being where the interview took place.

Although the UK-born Albanian singer has enjoyed her time in the US, she admits everyday tasks, such as riding in a car, can be daunting, due to America’s affinity toward guns.

“Being from the UK, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around,” Lipa said. “When I’m in the car with someone in America and they have, like, a little bit of road rage, I’m always like, ‘Don’t do it. You have no idea who that other person is and if they’re carrying a gun.’”

In addition to gun safety, Lipa has also been vocal about reproductive rights. Last week, following the news that Roe v. Wade may be overturned, Lipa took to Instagram, asking, “Do you want to keep abortion safe and legal in the US?,” then encouraging her followers to “join a protest. Use your vote. Donate.”

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

TV’s best villain is back.

In last night’s episode of Better Call Saul, “Black and Blue,” Lalo Salamanca, played by Tony Dalton (no one goes from charming to mustache-twirling better than him), made only his second appearance of the season. (“Whenever Lalo’s not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking, where’s Lalo?”) He’s been on the run since the raid at his compound in the season five finale, so where did he go?

It turns out, he traveled to Germany to visit / seduce / nearly kill the wife of Werner Ziegler, the engineer who helped build Gus’s super-lab back in New Mexico. After a long night at the bar, Lalo walks Margarethe home. She’s tempted to invite him inside, but she has work in the morning (and it would also be her first romantic encounter with a man since the death of her husband) so they go their separate ways. Or so she thinks — Lalo waits until she leaves the next morning to break into her house and begin his sleuthing.

It’s a tense sequence, never more so than when Margarethe’s (bilingual?) dog, Little Bear, won’t shut the heck up. He senses evil. Lalo is too smart to kill a dog (he’s not an animal activist, or anything, but it would leave behind a body and therefore, evidence), but I was still concerned for Little Bear. I wasn’t the only one, either.

Paddington is still the best little bear, but Little Bear is in second place.

No one wants to be described as “unf*ckable”—unless the person who’s thinking about it is ultra-slimeball Harvey Weinstein. Yet that’s the situation Minnie Driver found herself in back in the mid-1990s, when she auditioned for the role of Skylar, a soon-to-be Harvard grad getting ready to head off to medical school at Stanford, and the object of Matt Damon’s desire (both onscreen and off) in 1997’s Good Will Hunting.

In a recent interview with The Telegraph, which Variety also reported on, Driver recalled how she almost didn’t even get the part because of a note the disgraced Miramax head—who Damon and Ben Affleck have accused of attempting to sabotage the movie—sent along to the casting department, in which he railed against her casting because “nobody would want to f*ck her.” As Driver told The Telegraph:

“I remember feeling so devastated until I realized, ‘Hold on, just consider the source for a minute. That is an unutterable pig—why on earth are you worried about this f*ck saying that you are not sexy?’ But there are ramifications of that: that maybe I am not going to be hired because people don’t think I have the sexual quality that is required.”

Fortunately, cooler—and less perverse—heads prevailed, and cast Driver in the role, which earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.

Looking back now, Driver realizes how lucky she actually was. “How awful to think that I was one of the lucky ones [who escaped him] because he didn’t think I was f*ckable,” Driver said. “And how amazing and wonderful that it has turned around and young men and women in my industry are not going to experience that.”

Driver is currently promoting her new memoir, Managing Expectations. Weinstein, meanwhile, is serving out a 23-year prison sentence, where he was recently reprimanded for attempting to smuggle in a box of Milk Duds.

(Via Variety)

Sound the alarm: Ted Cruz is back on his bullsh*t! On Monday night, the Texas senator was chatting with Sean Hannity about the pro-choice protestors who are demonstrating outside the homes of the five conservative Supreme Court Justices who are working to overturn Roe v. Wade. Cruz thinks it’s a horrible thing, and actually had the audacity to describe the situation as “complete hypocrisy.”

As Cruz sees it:

“On January 6, 2021, you had tens of thousands of people peacefully protesting, and yet the corporate media and Democrats slander them with the made-up term ‘insurrectionists.’ And yet, in this instance, they are not willing to call off their goons even now—even now as this has the potential to escalate and escalate further.”

There’s definitely one goon here. And it’s the guy who all of a sudden thinks that “insurrectionist” isn’t a real word.

While there’s certainly nothing shocking about a Republican slamming pro-choice protestors, that it’s Cruz of all people is where the real hypocrisy lies—and yet it’s not at all surprising.

Meidas Touch shared the same clip from Cruz’s Monday night Fox News interview, but paired it with two other clips of Teddy talking about the events of January 6th, the first one from back in the very same month they happened, at which time he seemed to have a much different viewpoint.

Describing the Capitol rioters as “terrorists,” Cruz talked about how shocking it was to see these people “attacking police officers” and “tragically murdering a police officer.” He called the events of that day “a violent attack on the Capitol” in which we saw “terrorists breaking onto the floor of the Senate chamber and the floor of the House. And all of us are horrified.”

The clip then cut ahead to early January 2022—yep, four months ago—just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the riots, which Cruz described as a “solemn” occasion. “It is an anniversary of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol,” he explained.

As they say, hindsight is 20/20.

(Via Aaron Rupar)

Leaks were a major concern during Donald Trump‘s time in office thanks to a non-stop barrage of damaging stories coming out of the White House. Part of that is because Trump’s admin was a dumpster fire full of scandal, and another part is because Trump himself was the “biggest leaker,” according to a new book from former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

According to Esper, leaks were used frequently not just by White House underlings, but Trump himself to advance personal agendas ranging from both petty to political. “Nobody wanted to see their name in the morning news, especially when the words were so often twisted, misinterpreted, and taken out of context,” Esper wrote. “In the Trump administration, this could get you blacklisted or fired.” Via Business Insider:

“The individual motivations for the leaks ranged from advancing a preferred policy outcome to enhancing the leaker’s own role or credentials to currying favor with the president. It was a noxious behavior learned from the top. The president was the biggest leaker of all. It turned colleague against colleague, department against department, and it was generally bad for the administration and the country,” Esper wrote in “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times.”

Esper’s claims jibes with an anecdote from Chris Christie’s book, Republican Rescue, where the former New Jersey governor revealed that Trump once bragged to him about leaking a story that Christie was being considered for White House Chief of Staff. After learning that Trump was the source of the leak, Christie took a pass on the position.

(Via Business Insider)

Jack Harlow just unveiled Come Home The Kids Miss You, a highly anticipated album with a Drake feature, a video with Anitta, and a song about Dua Lipa. He announced yesterday that he’ll be embarking on a tour to promote the LP. Last night, he took the stage at The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon to perform one of his hits, “First Class.” Against screens displaying a blue sky, he raps slickly while the floor floods with white fog. His flow is uninterrupted and smooth, and the stage setup really brings the song to life.

When talking to Fallon, the “Nail Tech” rapper was asked about the viral video of him and Emma Chamberlain at the Met Gala in which he casually ends a conversation with “love ya,” which promptly makes Chamberlain almost freak out. About it, he said, “That’s like a piece of art because there’s so many ways to interpret that, you know what I mean? Everyone has a different take on what was going through her head, so I’ll leave it up to interpretation.” They also discussed the NBA video, with Harlow noting that after the clip of the refs aired during the game broadcast, his phone was flooded with messages.

Watch his performance of “First Class” on The Tonight Show above.

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