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Elon Musk’s having a grand old time with his new toy (not exactly something the kids find under a tree, since Twitter cost him $44 billion), but not everyone is as amused as he is. Tesla shareholders, for one, had a freakout session. And even though Lauren Boebert is thrilled about “free speech” (even though this really isn’t a First Amendment issue, as Elon has tried to make it be), the EU already warned Musk that his non-moderation and “free speech absolutist” take on every single statement isn’t going to fly with them.

Regardless, Elon apparently decided that everyone’s being too serious, and even though no one really knows where he will get all of the money (investors will help, obviously, but he might have to sell off a ton of Tesla stock), he’s taking some of this seriously. He suggested that Twitter implement end-to-end encryption like Signal does things.

Then it was time to have some fun. Bring on a “cocaine” tweet, right? That’s what happened. He couldn’t resist.

“Next,” the Tesla CEO tweeted. “I’m buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in.”

And then there was this: “Let’s make Twitter maximum fun!”

From there, Elon had an absolute ball responding to coke-cocaine remarks with stuff like “Kicks Red Bull’s ass!”

This led to a reality check: Elon won’t be able to buy Coke unless a miracle happens.

And there was the inevitable: “Imagine not being able to tell when someone is joking….”

Naturally, jokes about Don Jr and Howard Hughes and plenty more rolled out as well. (Also, I’m not sure how Elon has the time to tweet so much? He has a lot going on, supposedly.)

It should be noted that Elon should not try to be a mattress guru, either. Just ask Grimes, who revealed that he wouldn’t replace a mattress with a giant hole. He also thinks that buying McDonald’s to fix ice cream machines is a step too far.

LAPD claims to have confiscated several guns from the home of ASAP Rocky after his arrest at LAX last week and a subsequent raid in which officers tried to use a battering ram to open his gate. TMZ reports that LAPD’s search yielded a number of weapons that the police will test to find out if any were used in an alleged shooting in November 2021. The victim in that shooting claims that Rocky shot him in the hand. Police will also run background checks on the weapons to determine their ownership.

Rocky was arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday, April 20 after returning from Barbados with his pregnant girlfriend Rihanna. Shortly after the arrest, but before Rocky was able to post his $550,000 bail, police raided his home, with a passerby capturing footage of officers fumbling with the gate at the home and later leaving with “a box of potential evidence.”

The rapper has an extensive history of legal issues in his native New York, where he spent time on Riker’s Island for selling drugs and has been involved in several fights that ended with him being charged with assault, but nothing involving guns. His most high-profile arrest was in 2019, when he was held for two months in Sweden after a fight in Stockholm. In that case, he was released ahead of trial and found guilty in absence, but given a suspended sentence.

For those unfamiliar, the “chopped and screwed” genre involves remixing an existing song by slowing it down and deejaying. Now, a Bon Iver song, 2020’s “PDLIF,” has gotten that treatment by The Drobitussin and it turns out Justin Vernon is a fan of the rework.

Responding to Drobitussin’s tweet about the song, Vernon wrote from his personal account, “Yo this is so so sick appreciate you.”

As is the case with most “chopped and screwed” songs, the tempo is noticeably lower here, meaning the song is stretched out to over ten minutes long. Vernon’s warped vocals actually sound at home in this context, as he frequently puts some sort of effect on his voice anyway.

Bon Iver initially shared the song in April 2020 and gave proceeds to humanitarian aid organization Direct Relief, to support healthcare workers during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The song includes contributions from Jim-E Stack, BJ Burton, Kacy Hill, Rob Moose, and Michael Lewis, and Bon Iver noted at the time, “It proves that, though apart, we’re never alone; the importance of collaboration/community is as strong as ever.”

Check out the “Screwed And Chopped” version of “PDLIF” above and listen to the original version below.

In a summer otherwise dominated by sequels and superheroes (and sequels about superheroes), there’s Nope. The plot of Jordan Peele’s third feature, following the Oscar-winning Get Out and Us, has been kept secret, outside of the official plot synopsis teasing it as an “expansive horror epic” about “residents in a lonely gulch of inland California who bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery.” But while speaking at CinemaCon on Wednesday, Peele discussed the meaning of Nope‘s memorable title.

“The film is a ride. The title speaks to the idea of the audience reacting to what they’re thinking and feeling in the theater,” he explained (via ScreenRant). “When you tell people it’s a scary movie a lot of time they say ‘NOPE.’ So I want to acknowledge those people with the title and bring them in. This is about the person who thinks they don’t love the horror movie. To show them that maybe they do.”

I have seen the Nope trailer at least six times in theater over the past two months, and it’s met with excitable anticipation from the crowd every time. Is it going to be a hit? Yup.

Nope, which stars Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun, opens on July 22.

(Via ScreenRant)

You ever watch that mid-’90s movie Multiplicity with Michael Keaton? In the flick, Keaton’s character laments that he has too many responsibilities in life and clones himself so as to not feel spread too thin anymore. Long story short, hilarity ensues, but you get the feeling that maybe Jeff Tweedy has tapped in to a similar science?

As if Tweedy and Wilco weren’t already busy enough with the 20th anniversary release and accompanying shows for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, curating and headlining their own festivals, late-night TV appearances, and writing books, Wilco has just announced a new album, Cruel Country. The Chicago band’s 12th full-length album is actually a double-disc release featuring 21 tracks and is simply another unbelievable endeavor for what might very well be the busiest band on the planet.

Cruel Country sees the band tackling the roots of the country music lean that has followed them throughout their career. While the band has become much bigger than the early “alt-country” genre that was once assigned to them, Tweedy explains that even though there have always been elements of country in the band’s music, Wilco, “had never been particularly comfortable with accepting that definition,” he said in a statement. “But now, having been around the block a few times, we’re finding it exhilarating to free ourselves within the form, and embrace the simple limitation of calling the music we’re making Country.”

The album — which Wilco will perform in full at their Solid Sound Festival (their other festival) in Massachusetts the same weekend of the album’s release date on May 27th — is largely comprised of live takes at the band’s Chicago studio, The Loft.

“It’s a style of recording that forces a band to surrender control and learn to trust each other, along with each others’ imperfections, musical and otherwise,” Tweedy says. “But when it’s working the way it’s supposed to, it feels like gathering around some wild collective instrument, one that requires six sets of hands to play.”

There’s a conceptual narrative built into Cruel Country about the history of the United States. That, along with the unique recording style and country music approach, is on full display in the video for the lead single, “Falling Apart (Right Now).” Making sense of everything (as he always does so well), Tweedy added, “Country music is simply designed to aim squarely at the low-hanging fruit of the truth. If someone can sing it, and it’s given a voice… well, then it becomes very hard not to see. We’re looking at it. It’s a cruel country, and it’s also beautiful. Love it or leave it. Or if you can’t love it, maybe you’ve already left.”

Watch the live in studio video for “Falling Apart (Right Now)” above and check out the Cruel Country album artwork and tracklist below.

1. “I Am My Mother”
2. “Cruel Country”
3. “Hints”
4. “Ambulance”
5. “The Empty Condor”
6. “Tonight’s The Day”
7. “All Across The World”
8. “Darkness Is Cheap”
9. “Bird Without A Tail / Base Of My Skull”
10. “Tired Of Taking It Out On You”
11. “The Universe”
12. “Many Worlds”
13. “Hearts Hard To Find”
14. “Falling Apart (Right Now)”
15. “Please Be Wrong”
16. “Story To Tell”
17. “A Lifetime To Find”
18. “Country Song Upside-Down”
19. “Mystery Binds”
20. “Sad Kind Of Way”
21. “The Plains”

Cruel Country is out 5/27 via dBpm Records. Pre-order it here.

Daisy Edgar-Jones has had a hell of a year. After hooking audiences with her charming, enigmatic performance as Marianne in Hulu’s Normal People opposite co-star Paul Mescal (and his chain) she’s been consistently popping up on our timelines. Sometimes, it’s for a horror-comedy that compares modern dating to a literal meat market, a la Fresh. Other times, it’s thanks to the hype surrounding a book-to-screen adaptation of a best-selling novel beloved by Reese Witherspoon’s book club posse, as with Where The Crawdads Sing.

But most recently, it’s for her work in FX’s true-crime thriller Under The Banner of Heaven. Based on a true story about a closed community of Mormons living in Utah that’s rocked by a gruesome double homicide committed by some of its own members, the show stars Andrew Garfield as a devout LDS detective wrestling with his faith while investigating the case while Jones plays the woman at the center of the crime. Brenda Lafferty was a young mother with a bright future whose quiet rebellion when it came to strict religious doctrine marked her as a target for the men in power. Her story doesn’t end well, but for Jones, that just means it all the more worth telling.

UPROXX chatted with her about deep diving into Mormonism for her latest role, hiking with bears in the Canadian Rockies, and why, after this year, she’s ready to have a laugh.

This feels like one of those stories where, if you’re not in that community, you’d never know about it. So did you learn anything surprising when you signed on?

So I knew nothing about this story prior to getting the scripts. I read them, like, in a day. And then I read the book immediately after and was really, really gripped from start to finish. And I mean, there was a huge amount that was surprising because I didn’t know anything about the Mormon community or this story in particular. So the whole thing was really, really intriguing.

Andrew Garfield is an actor who likes to do quite a bit of prep beforehand. How did you immerse yourself in this world?

He was actually a really helpful source of knowledge. He was able to go to Utah and meet with people before filming. I wasn’t able to because of COVID. So he was definitely a sounding board, and we had advisors on set to guide us. And the book is obviously so in-depth. And [Dustin] Lance [Black], who is our showrunner, grew up Mormon too, so he was really helpful. He was very open and very diplomatic and very easy to approach. So yeah, I was just asking loads of questions. [laughs] That was my approach.

Your character is an outsider to this world in many ways. What about who she is and how she navigates this very stifling world for women at the time, drew you to her?

I think one thing the show does really well … because we also have the early founding aspects of the community, it really does a good job of showing the spectrum of experience that these women have. I loved what an enigmatic, confident, intelligent person Brenda was. The fact that she wants to pursue her education … it was really interesting to see her then step into the family dynamic of the Lafferty’s and really watch the way she observes the other women and how much more repressed they are and how keen she is to look out for them and try and give them agency. I think that’s a really important thing to always represent on television, are these women looking out for each other and looking after each other and pulling each other up, rather than trying to squash each other.

How did you and the rest of the cast shake this stuff off when shooting was done for the day?

We ate so much food! [laughs] That was a big part of it. Also, we filmed in Calgary, and it’s surrounded by like incredible … Is it the Rockies?

I know there’s some kind of mountain range there.

[laughs] Yeah, there are lots of mountains. So we did a lot of hiking, which, coming from London, I’m a city gal. I’m not great at long-distance walking. I did enjoy it. Just not the more uphill moments. But on the whole, it was a great bonding experience for all of us.

If not you, who was the skilled hiker of the group?

Yeah on the hike, I actually wore the wrong shoes. And I was like, ‘Go on without me,’ because I had such terrible blisters. But actually, Seth [Numrich], who plays Robin, is a very skilled hiker. He even had a bear bell. I felt very safe with him, high up in the mountains.

Thinking about the characters you’ve played this past year, is there something that connects all of them?

I think that’s interesting and only something I’ve actually noticed through this question, but I think all of those characters are battling with their sense of self. With Marianne [in Normal People], her idea of herself is very different from how she comes across. It’s the same with Noah [in Fresh]. All the characters grow up in a way. And I’m also really interested in how much a person can affect another person’s life. I think we really see that with Connell and Marianne, they fundamentally change the path of each other’s lives and bring such goodness to each other’s lives in the end. And the same with Brenda and the women, Molly with Noah, and Kya with Tate [in Where The Crawdads Sing], that is something I’m always intrigued by. But I also like how different they all are too. And as an actor, that’s something I’m really keen on trying to do more of, is find characters that I haven’t done before, that I can really stretch a muscle that I haven’t yet stretched.

What’s the next muscle then?

I think after this year of filming, I’d quite like to do pure comedy.

Without the cannibalism?

[laughs] Yeah, without any of that stuff. I think it would just be good for me to do just lovely, pure comedy, but also I’d love to play like a really mean character, someone really nasty. That’s something I haven’t done and is very… well, I hope very different from me.

‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ premieres via FX on April 28th.

Gina Carano was fired from a sweet gig on The Mandalorian — or in corporate speak, “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future” — after sharing a post on social media that implied being a Republican today is like being Jewish during the Holocaust. Ted Cruz came to her defense and she’s already working with Ben Shapiro, seen here listed among other (?) Black conservatives (??), but her character’s Star Wars spin-off series has been scrapped.

Carano’s The Mandalorian co-star Bill Burr thinks her firing was “f*cking bizarre.”

When asked by the Hollywood Reporter whether he believes it was fair that Carano was canned, the comedian replied, “No. I thought it was funny that the liberals proved her point. They just use outrage because they don’t like your politics. As someone who considers himself liberal, it’s disappointing to see the left become how the right used to be when they went after the Dixie Chicks after they criticized George W. Bush. There’s not a lot of people like that — most are just trying not to get in trouble — but there’s this small collection of lunatics — either on the right or the left, at any given moment – that cause hysteria. And now there’s so many [media outlets] that want eyeballs, they make money off advertising, that they give attention to these crazy fringe people.”

Burr continued:

“The whole thing with Gina: You can’t chime in when the shit’s happening, because then you cause static for other people on the [show]. That somebody’s opinion — or their political beliefs — makes people try to destroy their ability to make a living, it’s fucking bizarre to me.”

Burr previously called Carano an “absolute sweetheart” and “super nice f*cking person,” adding that “I’m on that f*cking show. Now, I gotta watch what the f*ck I say.” Only around the “creepy” Star Wars fans, though.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

Marjorie Taylor Greene is on a roll after going full soulless ghoul with claims about Satan, the Catholic Church, and migrants. The embattled QAnon cheerleader is looking at the very real possibility of being removed from the 2022 ballot and, after that happens, losing her congressional seat. She is incensed that she had to go to court over this mess, and of course, she began her testimony with a straight-up lie under oath, and she of the “gazpacho police” tweet is on the hook for another gem.

The MAGA enthusiast stopped by Fox News to chat with Laura Ingraham, where the two pretended that a report about Greene’s texts to Mark Meadows were lies, all lies. The congresswoman had testified that she hadn’t called for martial law as reported, but the texts told another story. CNN had revealed that Greene had pushed for “Marshall law,” and of course, the spelling there says everything (arguably almost as much as advocating that Trump should have directed the military to take over law enforcement duties to upend the “stolen” election). To refresh, here’s that text:

“In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law. I don’t know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next. Please tell him to declassify as much as possible so we can go after Biden and anyone else!”

Ingraham was more than happy to support Greene’s lies and allow her to insist that she didn’t remember advocating for martial law on text.

And the fact that Greene is lying isn’t surprising, but it’s sure something that Fox News went ahead and used “Marshall Law” without the quotes. People definitely noticed.

If this wasn’t Fox News, that chyron would be throwing some shade.

Every single in the lead up to the May 13th release of Kevin Morby’s This Is A Photograph has been nothing short of stellar Americana. From the epic title track, to the tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating triumph of “Rock Bottom,” Morby is slowly peeling back the layers of himself to analyze mortality, life, and living. Now with “A Random Act Of Kindness,” the Kansas City-native presents a sweeping tune that he says is “a sonic rocket ship that shoots you out into outer space.”

In the video, Morby taps at a telephone dial pad as if it were a keyboard playing a hymnal, as he sings, “Sun came up, through my hands. Sun came up, with no plan. Sun came up… strike up the band,” before the drums come in and the tune unfolds. The lyrics and melody are strikingly reminiscent to those of “Tin Can,” off of Morby’s 2017 breakthrough album, City Music, and it feels like we’re witnessing nothing short of a peaking songwriter’s linear yarn.

“I set out to write a song where each line could be interpreted in two completely different ways,” Morby said of the song in a statement. “For example; when I sing the words ‘out of trust…’ it could be heard as either I have lost my sense of trust in something or that I am committing an act with trust as my motive. It’s a song about the menacing nature of the sun rising during a dark time in one’s life only to further illuminate their pain and suffering — and how during these periods it is often the selfless acts of strangers that keeps a person going.”

Watch the video for “A Random Act Of Kindness” above.

This Is A Photograph is out 5/13 via Dead Oceans. Pre-order it here.

There was a distinct period of time in 2021 when the #FreeBritney movement, a fan-led push to get Britney Spears out of her then 13-year-long conservatorship, launched from the fringe corners of online stan culture into the mainstream. Well-regarded national outlets began taking the movement seriously, perhaps fueled by the Hulu documentary Framing Britney Spears. The film allowed us to collectively re-live the early 2000s through the lens of a society who now (mostly) recognizes misogyny in media and the dangers of putting a young pop star on a pedestal.

Most of Gen Z wasn’t old enough to experience the beginning of Spears’ conservatorship and her 2007 “meltdown,” now seen as a rebellion against parasitic paparazzi. But they did grow up on the internet, meaning they understand the dangers of being vilified by the media. Now that we’re living in a time when social media can be both a source of liberation and ridicule, PinkPantheress has emerged as a rising pop star who is reclaiming her image and taking control of how she’s perceived by the public.

PinkPantheress is a 20-year-old UK musician whose success story only could have happened this decade. A year and a half ago, PinkPantheress was attending film school in London and posting 15-second snippets of her remixes on TikTok. Now, she boasts the debut album To Hell With It, a record deal, millions of followers across social media, and over 6.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone. Despite her international popularity, virtually no one knows PinkPantheress’ real name — and she’d like to keep it that way. She rarely even shares photos of herself; of her seven Instagram posts, only half are photos of her. In fact, she admitted that she considered never showing her face until some people online speculated she was white. “I had to set that record straight,” she told Interview Magazine.

The real reason for all the mystery isn’t because she wants to keep secrets. She’s seen the way the media’s perception has impacted artists, and she wants to avoid those downsides at all costs. “I just didn’t want what I looked like – negatively or positively – to impact my music. So that’s why first off I started [by] not showing my face,” she told The Face. Her relative anonymity is also a way of protecting her personal life. As an already shy person, PinkPantheress wants the ability to post freely online without concern about how she’s being perceived. “It’s not about secrecy. I’m avoiding stress and preconceptions,” she told i-D.

Though TikTok’s algorithm typically seems to prioritize creators who show their face in videos, PinkPantheress’ music was compelling enough to go viral on its own. It all started when she began remixing late-90s and early-’00s house music like Crystal Waters and Adam F in her dorm room while procrastinating on assignments, layering her bright, dulcet vocals over tightly-packed beats. The young artist had only been making music for a few years before she began posting on TikTok. Her first video is dated in late December of 2020 and just a few months later, her music was all over the app.

At the time, PinkPantheress remained humble about her increasing popularity, not even telling her close friends until one of her videos was outed in a group chat. But don’t mistake her modesty for a lack of passion. PinkPantheress had been seriously trying to get her music to reach the right audience for months, at first trying to make it big on SoundCloud before making TikTok her platform of choice. Eventually, her 15-second clips turned into 1.5-2-minute long songs, resulting in a record deal with Coldplay’s label Parlophone and a debut release, To Hell With It, which clocks in at just over 18 minutes.

PinkPantheress has offered a simple explanation as to why her songs are short in interviews. No, it’s not an acute commentary on her generation’s short attention spans the media blames on smartphone addictions. Her songs are concise simply because she gets bored writing. “I’m so lazy when it comes to writing, and I’m so lazy in general when it comes to music, that I really don’t like having to write more than I have to, which is actually why my songs are so short,” she admitted in an interview with Complex. She notes that she’ll never spend more than an hour at a time on a given track, even recording one of her songs during the course of a Zoom lecture. “I only ever want to write what I want to write. I never like feeling like there needs to be a section B and a hook and… I just like having the freedom to write exactly the length of what I want,” she added.

So, why does a musician who rarely shows her face and makes songs no longer than 2 minutes resonate so deeply with the younger generation? Well, for one thing, her songs are wildly catchy — and not in an over-the-top production kind of way. There’s a tangible authenticity to her sound, which also translates to offline persona (she oftentimes talks about trying to avoid being labeled “cringe” in interviews). She’s not going to make a five-minute-long song just because her label tells her so. In fact, when fans quip about her short songs, like one commenter under her “Just For Me” YouTube video who wrote, “pinkpantheress concerts finna be like 17 minutes long,” she’s in on the joke.

Much like her guarded public image, PinkPantheress’ music speaks to feeling more comfortable connecting with someone from a distance. A lot of her songs are almost voyeuristic in nature, detailing on obsession with a crush from afar but never getting close enough to admit feelings. Songs like “Just For Me” and “Last Valentines” can act as metaphors for parasocial relationships, one-sided relationships formed with someone’s media presence, which are at times more comfortable than opening yourself up to vulnerability and the possibility of rejection. While PinkPantheress is now on the other side of a parasocial relationship with her fans, she knows the feeling all too well, having come of age as a secret K-Pop stan who would spend her free time in her bedroom editing fancam videos.

Because she tends to sample music from a previous decade, PinkPantheress herself describes her music as “new nostalgic.” Written by someone who was born in the year 2001, PinkPantheress’ music is made to feel nostalgia of a time period she never lived through. It draws inspiration from the best parts of the early aughts, like hyper-saturated vocals and simple beats, while leaving behind the worst parts of the decade, like the blatant misogyny in the music industry (remember when interviewers were obsessed with asking Britney Spears uncomfortable questions about her virginity?). Unlike Spears, PinkPantheress has opted to remain out of the limelight in her young career. Who knows, there might be a time when fans can learn PinkPantheress’ real name. But for now, what we know about PinkPantheress is exactly what PinkPantheress wants us to know.

To Hell With It is out now via Parlophone. Get it here.

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