GoneTrending

As another wave of Covid takes over Hollywood, many celebs have been canceling or rescheduling shows and appearances. Jimmy Kimmel, on the other hand, went a different route for his show: asking one of the guests to host for him. In this case, his guest was comedian Mike Birbiglia, whose name is pronounced exactly how it’s spelled if you sound it out, though you would think it was full of some silent letters based on the way some TV anchors butchered it.

The host poked fun at the pronunciations, which included names like Berbillya, Birgbiglia, Bigaberly, which Birbiglia says, “rolls off the tongue.”

The temporary host chronicled his trip to California by joking that a new Southwest Airlines promotion includes free hosting duties with every flight. “I am your substitute teacher for the night,” the comedian joked before showing the clips of his name being mispronounced by various news anchors. “If you don’t know me, I’m just one of those guys who you sorta recognize but probably don’t.” He then showed a series of texts from Kimmel asking him to host.

The comedian, whose TV credits include Girls, Broad City, and Orange Is The New Black, says he is in town for the Netflix comedy festival. He was able to step in and interview one of the most iconic comedians, Mike Meyers, and Birbiglia described himself as a “superfan.” Check out the monologue above.

The fallout continues for Netflix after the streaming giant announced that it lost over 200,000 subscribers in its first fiscal quarter of 2022, prompting it to slash several projects as it attempts to get its astronomical spending under control. The company had projected that it would gain subscribers, which was clearly not the case, and now, shareholders are claiming fraud in a new lawsuit against the streaming service.

The aggrieved investors are seeking “compensatory damages in favor of Plaintiff and the other Class members against all defendants, jointly and severally, for all damages sustained as a result of Defendants’ wrongdoing.” (Read: Money. Lots and lots of money.)

Via Variety:

Netflix misled investors about declining subscriber growth over the course of six months — leading to a massive drop in its stock price, according to a shareholder lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal district court in San Francisco, alleges Netflix violated U.S. securities laws by making “materially false and/or misleading statements” and also because it “failed to disclose material adverse facts about the company’s business, operations and prospects.”

As for the subscriber issue, well, things don’t look to be improving there either. According to Variety, Netflix is already projecting that it expects to lose an additional two million in its second quarter. Yikes. Interestingly, analysts blame Netflix’s mammoth success on its subscriber growth issue. In a nutshell, the streaming service has such vast market penetration that there are very little left to sign up. Take away the pandemic, which created a captive audience, and a subscriber plunge was inevitable.

Netflix also has to contend with users growing complacent with its original offerings, its quick hooks of series after just one or two seasons, and a diminishing back catalog as other studios and networks build up their own competing streaming services. It’s also reportedly dropping over $30 million per episode on Stranger Things. So there are a few culprits here. That’s the point.

(Via Variety)

This morning, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame announced its class of 2022 inductees, which features Eminem, Duran Duran, Lionel Richie, Pat Benatar, Eurythmics, Carly Simon, and, perhaps most notably given her recent history, Dolly Parton; After she was named a nominee, she rejected the nomination, saying she didn’t feel she had “earned that right.”

Sure enough, she did indeed get voted in the Hall Of Fame and now she’s offered a reaction, writing on social media, “I am honored and humbled by the fact that I have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Of course I will accept it gracefully. Thanks to everyone that voted for me and to everyone at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I will continue to work hard and try to live up to the honor. Love, Dolly.”

This echoes what Parton recently said about how she’d respond to being voted in: “Well, I’ll accept gracefully. I would just say thanks and I would accept it because the fans vote. But when I said that, it was always my belief that the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame was for the people in rock music. I have found out lately that it’s not necessarily that, but if they can’t go there to be recognized, where do they go? So I just felt like I would be taking away from someone that maybe deserved it, certainly more than me, since I never considered myself a rock artist. But obviously, there’s more to it than that.”

Check out more reactions from this year’s inductees here.

Dreaming about moving to another country and starting over is no longer just a dream for some people. A growing number of millennial expats are finding their American dream in another country. And they’re taking to social media to invite us to follow their journeys. Living comfortably in America is merely a dream for most people, so seeing expats doing it in other countries is inspiring more people than ever to seek a better life than they can achieve in the United States elsewhere.

Thirty-three-year-old Olumide Gbenro, has made a life in Bali that would be unattainable to most Americans. When Gbenro was around 13, his family immigrated to Columbus, Ohio after living in London as a child. Gberno spent the first six years of his life in his home country of Nigeria, so relocating was not new to him when he decided to leave the states to find his future home. Before deciding to leave it all behind, Olumide was on a different path. A path his parents had set before him, but it wasn’t the path he wanted to follow.

In 2016, Gberno graduated with two master’s degrees from San Diego State University. One master’s was in epidemiology and the other in behavioral sciences. The new graduate was primed to go on for his PhD just as his parents wanted, but enrolling in a PhD program meant traveling the world would be off the table and the soon to be expat wasn’t ready to give up on that dream. The choice then became to become a doctor or travel and since traveling was in his blood it was a no-brainer.

Gberno told CNBC Make It, “All of my life, I just followed the rules, whether it was from my parents, religion or society,” he says. “But deep down I knew that if I took the position in the PhD program, I could never go back, I could never travel abroad…I’d be stuck to a lab, so I decided to say ‘no.’” Shortly after coming to the conclusion that a PhD wasn’t for him, he packed up his belongings and headed out of the country.

See on Instagram

Olumide took some time in a few other locations before settling in Bali; the new expat first stopped in Berlin on a three month tourist visa, staying in hostels and couch surfing at friends’ houses. Gberno didn’t have much savings when he left America, so not working wasn’t an option, and eventually he struck success with his online business in social media marketing. He was able to grow his Instagram following fairly quickly by posting photos of his adventures and dance videos. With a larger following, he started reaching out to other creators and businesses offering to help improve their social media strategy for the small fee of $250. Eventually, enabled him to turn it into a lucrative business that helps sustain his lifestyle.

After Olumide’s three months in Berlin were up, he traveled to Mexico and then back to San Diego where he launched his business, Olumide Gbenro PR & Brand Monetization, in 2018. While scrolling through Instagram he saw a post from a friend visiting Bali at the time. The scenery appealed to him, so he decided to go. After many flights back and forth to Singapore and Malaysia to extend his visa 30 days at a time, he was granted an investors visa.

Gberno earns about $140,000 a year and his biggest expense is his rent and utilities which total $1,010 a month. He spends about $600 a month on take out and eating at restaurants and continues to travel at least once a month. Gberno told CNBC “I’m probably spending about the same amount of money I would each month if I was living in San Diego, but my quality of living is much higher,” he says. “I’m living a life of luxury.”

These expats make living abroad look like a feasible goal and for some it is. Be warned that following these adventurous souls on social media may make you want to pack a few bags and never look back.

Elon Musk is yet again the subject of a documentary series, but this time around, the team behind the recent deep dive into infamous British TV personality Jimmy Saville will probe Musk’s rise to power for the BBC. Titled The Elon Musk Show, the docuseries has reportedly made adjustments to include Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter before it airs later this year. The filmmakers will also make use of an “extensive and unseen archive” charting Musk’s early years in Silicon Valley where he made a name for himself through the formation of Paypal before finding success with Space X and Tesla.

Via Deadline:

“There is no getting away from Elon Musk,” said the directors. “It’s always exciting to be documenting the biggest stories of the day, and our series will go inside Elon’s inner circle, examining the billionaire’s incredible rise and the truth behind this modern icon.”

BBC Commissioning Editor Simon Young described Musk as “one of the most enigmatic and intriguing people in the world.”

The documentary announcement follows news that Musk’s purchase of Twitter is raising concerns across the pond. According to Deadline, Musk has been summoned to appear in front of the UK parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee to discuss his plans for Twitter. While Musk has no obligation to attend, the committee hopes to have his participation so it can hear how Musk will “balance his clear commitment to free speech with new obligations to protect Twitter’s users from online harms.” So far, the new owner of the social media platform hasn’t been forthcoming on those details besides repeatedly saying he’s a “free speech absolutist,” whatever that means.

(Via Deadline)

Donald Trump is “so great looking,” raves Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is a “true Stable Genius,” according to Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is the owner of a “gorgeous chest,” reports Donald Trump.

If the former-president ever writes a sequel to The Art of the Deal, it could be called The Art of the Boast. For his latest instance of self-aggrandizement, Trump claimed (not for the first time) that “nobody has done more for Christianity, nobody has done more for religion of all types than me.” This came during an interview with CBN “News,” where he also declared, “Everything I said was right.” Modest as always.

“I’m not just talking about energy or on the border. I’m talking about religion. I said these people are against evangelicals. I said they’re against Israel. I said they’re against organized religion, frankly. They’re against all of the things that you and I, and most of your viewers, stand for. And when I said that during debates and elsewhere, people sort of weren’t sure. I turned out to be right. And I’ve had many people say, as good as I think we were, they said, you were the best at it. You were the best, and they want me back.”

Many people are saying this… but no one is Truth Social-ing it.

Anyway, you could replace “religion” in the earlier quote with literally any other word, and still imagine Trump saying it. “Nobody has done more for Home Alone sequels of all types than me.” “Nobody has done more for Coke products of all types than me.” “Nobody has done more for clogged toilets of all types than me.” It’s a fun game. Try it.

Chicago indie favorites Beach Bunny have a sophomore album, Emotional Creature, on the way in July after announcing it in March. Now they’re back with a new single from the project, “Karaoke,” the visual for which features a cameo appearance from Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk.

Most of the video is low-key, as it features the band, dressed in Star Wars-esque outfits in what looks like a spaceship’s living room, huddled around TV. Odenkirk (in the role of Star Captain) pops up at the end, after the song is over. He addresses the band (“Star Team,” as they’re apparently called), sharing info about an enemy ship and giving them an urgent and majorly important mission.

The Odenkirk cameo isn’t as random as it may seem, as he’s actually been a fan of the band for a while: In July 2019, he shared a selfie of himself with the group and wrote, “Just saw my fave new Chicago band Beach Bunny at the supercool Meow Wolf in Santa Fe! Fun! Me lucky.”

The band’s Lili Trifilio previously said of the upcoming album, “We are always changing, growing, and adapting — it’s a deeply ingrained part of the human experience. We strive to be stronger, trust we’ll grow smarter, and spend most of our lives reaching for comfort and happiness. Sometimes, life is stagnant, sometimes, life is difficult — but the wonderful part of being human is that we evolve and make the bleak moments beautiful — we find new ways to survive. Humans are emotional creatures and I wanted to capture that with this album in order to show how complex, sometimes tragic, and mostly wonderful the human experience can be.”

Watch the “Karaoke” video above.

Emotional Creature is out 7/22 via Mom+Pop Music. Pre-order it here.

A few months ago, fans of Los Angeles rap on Twitter were left agape by a post by a local blogger, who shared his thoughts on the city’s current crop of talent via a “rap report card” featuring grades for the likes of newcomers such as Blxst, Kalan.FrFr, Roddy Ricch, and more. The post sparked a days-long debate that quickly became more than contentious thanks to the near-universally mediocre numbers the blogger handed out, which many took as an overt diss to their hard work, talents, and successes to date. Considering some of the names mentioned are just beginning to receive mainstream attention or release music professionally, that feeling is fair.

One of the rappers who took issue with his assessment is Carson native Jayson Cash, who at the time had only released a handful of tracks. Despite his relative obscurity, his performance on “Priority,” “All I Know,” and an impressive showing on LA Leakers had already secured him a deal with Asylum Records, and since then, he’s only become more of a priority, moving up to Atlantic Records and prepping the release of his debut project with singles “Top Down” and “Him” featuring Dom Kennedy. But rather than lash out at the purveyor of the rap report card, Cash did something much more productive, hitting the studio to record the fiery “D+ Freestyle” aimed at refuting the claims against him. It was so impressive, West Coast hitmaker Mustard hit him up to get in the studio the same day.

Now, with Read The Room, his Atlantic debut, coming on May 27, and his new single “Him” out today, Jayson Cash re-introduces himself to the world. In a recent Zoom call with Uproxx, the Carson native explains why he deserved much better than a D+ and what fans can expect from him in the future.

For the world, Jayson Cash is a rapper from Carson, California. What are you most notable for so far?

First and foremost, just recently there was this magazine in LA that they were grading different new artists in LA, and they gave me a D+ grade. That’s crazy. I went in the studio and I recorded a response to it. And I didn’t disrespect the magazine or disrespect the person, the writer or anything of the sort, I just talked about a lot of the things that I did this past year. And after I did that, DJ Mustard heard my response and called me to the studio, “Yo, we got to get you in the studio today,” actually that same day. I just had the city just talking, talking, talking and that was just the most recent thing.

But before that, I dropped three singles and got signed. I’m one of a few people that got signed without having a bunch of music out — just a series of different freestyles and different things I was doing throughout the city, just building my name the organic, grassroots way.

I always think is mad funny when artists from Carson are, “No, we are from Carson.” [TDE rapper] Reason will be like, “No, I’m from Del Amo, bro.” Why is it so important for artists from Carson to really be out here screaming Carson, rather than LA?

If you went to New York tomorrow, met somebody that you never met before and they ask you where you from, you say you from Compton.

Yep. I’m saying Compton.

But they know what that is.

When I go out of town and they ask me where I’m from, and I say, “I’m from Carson,” then I got to say, “It’s a city in between Compton and Long Beach. It’s where TDE started.” I have to explain where I’m from to so many people so I figure while I’m on my run and I’m doing everything that I’m supposed to do and I’m yelling and stamping my city the same way that Dr. Dre and all them and Quik and all them put the stamp on Compton, the same way Snoop did on Long Beach, I can do that for Carson. Now when somebody go out of town they ain’t got to explain geographically where Carson is. We haven’t been stamped yet. I’m trying to make sure we get stamped.

Going back to that freestyle because the face that I made on that last line was just so… I used to want to make people make that face when I used to rap. You know, when your whole face sucks in.

“If the n**** with the fit and the shades / Got a 69 scoring a D+ grade / Because I’m ‘lazy, inconsistent and my catalog the same’ / Why the f*ck do y’all even think about mentioning my name?” That’s how I felt.

To be honest with you, the only thing I thought — because everybody’s entitled to an opinion… The only reason why I even responded was that not only was I on his freshman cover, but he came to the studio and he heard my project and he knew why it wasn’t out. I never even had a meeting with Atlantic, I got signed off emails. As far as putting records out, it’s not like I had a whole bunch of people just lined up like, ‘Okay, let’s make the Jayson Cash project happen.’ The consistency in my catalog, that was out of my control. I didn’t like the narrative that was being pushed, like, ‘That catalog is this, because they lazy.’

I’m not lazy at all. That’s what prompted me to respond, not to him, but to anybody that might have heard the conversation and looked at my score, which was all my scores is high except for consistency in catalog. Since this has a million impressions and everybody is seeing this, I don’t want nobody to have the wrong idea about me. Let me tell you who I actually am. I’m the one that wrote for Dr. Dre, I’m the one that did the freestyle with Snoop Dogg. I got Easty Boyz a check for [Blxst’s 2020 single] “Chosen.” I’m going to tell you everything that I’ve done on this run to where you can’t say my impact score is a six. I’m doing all this off three songs.

What are your plans? How much of your plans can you reveal? How much of that is in your control?

The project’s already turned in, singles, turned in. I’m still working on what’s coming after that. I don’t ever want to fall behind and feel like I’m trying to play catch-up. So I always want to be creating.

It’s a similar sound like me and Blxst was in the incubator together, working every day. It’s just my take on what I’m influenced by. When you listen to it, you’re going to hear everything I’m influenced by from Suga Free to Quik, to even like my peers, like Blxst. My era, the people before me, and et cetera. But you’re going to hear all that. Not only are you going to hear, you going to feel it because it’s in the music. I heard Blxst on his project say he a new Nate Dogg. So it’s like, if Blxst the new Nate Dogg, my mind is like, “Well, who am I?” That’s another void for me to fill because we haven’t had that run in LA as a rapper in a long time. So I wanted to present a sound, present a perspective and take this opportunity to really do some shit with the music.

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

Singer/songwriter Winona Oak has announced a release date for her much-anticipated debut album. Island Of The Sun will arrive this June, and contain songs like “Baby Blue,” “Piano In The Sky,” and “Break My Broken Heart.”

Ahead of the album’s release, Oak has released the latest cut, called “Jojo.” Oak, whose real name is Johanna Ekmark, named the song after a childhood nickname she was given growing up in Sollerön, Sweden. She chose to give the song that title since “Jojo” is lyrically a letter to herself.

In a statement, Oak says of the song:

“Sometimes I feel helpless, frustrated, and completely overwhelmed inside the frames of society. Specifically, I don’t know how to navigate inside this parallel universe of the internet and all that comes with it. It’s a world that’s getting more and more shallow and gives us endless access to everything. Polished images of ‘perfect’ people living their ‘perfect’ lives online. I will never look like them, but the thing is that they don’t even look like themselves. On the internet we can be whoever we want to be. We can pick apart and choose the best parts of our personality, showcase our best moments, our most flattering images and even manipulate them to look less human. It’s a toxic part of social media that pushes people into doing things that ruin them. How do we know what’s real? How do we find real love and honest connections when you judge someone based on their internet persona? If money controls everything how can people without it control a change?”

Check out “Jojo” above and our new interview with Oak here.

Island Of The Sun is out 6/10 via Atlantic. Pre-save it here.

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

Despite the average NBA ref not knowing who he is (they must not have watched Narnia), Jack Harlow has been flying high recently. After the success of his potentially controversial collaboration with Lil Nas X in 2021, more rap fans than ever know Harlow’s name — enough to lift his upcoming album’s second single, “First Class” to No. 1 on the Hot 100. His new album, Come Home The Kids Miss You, stands to also debut at the top of the Billboard 200 chart next week as a result.

So, naturally, fans on Twitter are putting his career trajectory in perspective as only fans on Twitter can. Comparing Harlow to another hotly tipped white rapper whose music career unfolded in a much different way, a commenter wrote, “jack harlow havin the career lil dicky thought he was gonna have.” The tweet has sparked a bit of a debate since some fans took it as a diss toward Dicky (who is still a much better-known factor at this point owing to several years’ head start).

One fan responded, “Let’s be clear tho lil dicky would wash jack harlow,” while another implored fellow fans, “Y’all better stop comparing Jack Harlow to Lil Dicky. Dave would rap circles around him, with all due respect.” However, others agreed with the original premise that Jack’s career had a much more positive trajectory compared to a similar point in Dicky’s.

Of course, Dicky has found a new outlet for his creativity in the form his FX show Dave, which allows him to put his comedy raps into the proper context to be fully appreciated. Meanwhile, Jack’s on his second album and still turning down pop collabs to keep it hip-hop, something we still have yet to see from Dicky, so if anything, the two rapper’s careers are more divergent than they are at odds. Dicky doesn’t even like performing, so obviously both had different goals to begin with.

Meanwhile, for those truly in the know, the real victim is Asher Roth, who managed to eke out one mainstream hit before being banished forever to the backrap circuit (where he is, for all appearances, perfectly comfortable and happy).