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While many artists have gotten back on the road since the start of the pandemic, it took a while for Nine Inch Nails to return to the stage. They did so last night, though, in Raleigh, North Carolina, for their first concert since 2018. They made the show special, too, with a couple of consecutive David Bowie covers: “I’m Afraid Of Americans” and “Fashion.”

Another noteworthy moment in the set happened right before the Bowie covers, when Nine Inch Nails performed “Every Day Is Exactly The Same” for the first time since 2006, as Setlist.fm notes.

Interestingly, NIN also covered Bowie at a 2017 concert, which, like last night’s performance, was their first after multiple years away from the stage.

Trent Reznor previously said of Bowie, “He just really started to become the best archetype for someone who has a fantastic voice and was kind of an actor pretending to be a rock star, in a way, which seemed to give him the ability to reinvent himself in ways that just felt like it would take a lot of courage to have had success at something and then throw it away and try something new. […] I still think about that dude all the time, and I still listen to him constantly. And I’m grateful that our lives intersected, and I’m grateful for, whether he knew it or not, how much he helped me in those dark times before I chose to get my sh*t together. And I can hear his voice. He penetrated through the layers of bullsh*t that I’d built around myself. I’m grateful for that.”

Check out last night’s Bowie covers above.

This season of Top Chef, coming so hot on the heels of last year’s surprisingly great COVID bubble season, has been a little hit and miss by comparison. A little up and down. Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what have yous…

Am I crazy, or did it feel like they started to turn it around this episode? It wasn’t choked with crappy product placement — Richard Blaise and Chris Scott didn’t show up in costumes to read lifeless ad copy promoting a Hitch reboot, say — the challenge had some gravitas, in a way that didn’t feel forced, and it actually related to food.

Also Padma looked good, even if I think we can all agree that she could’ve been a lot drunker.

Great outfit, now give her more booze! Anyway, pretty solid episode. My only real criticism? Not enough foams. WHERE ARE THE FOAMS? You used to get two, maybe three foams per Top Chef episode. These days we’re lucky if we get one aerated cheese. I blame inflation.

Anyway, this week opened with a monochromatic vegetarian challenge. The contestants had to draw from a series of colors and then prepare a vegetarian dish featuring only that color. A nice, old school Top Chef challenge. This, of course, turned out to be much easier for the people who drew, say, red, or yellow, than it was for the ones who drew white or black. Evelyn got stuck with the black, which, as she pointed out, isn’t even a color. Settle down, Evelyn, this is Top Chef, not Top Photography Student. Roy G. Biv wept.

After that, it was off to Bethel Baptist Church for a Juneteenth-themed challenge. This season was filmed in, as you might’ve guessed, Houston, which is in Texas, which is both the birthplace of and the setting for the events that inspired Juneteenth (based on the day when slaves in Galveston were finally freed, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation). Which just became an official national holiday this past year.

The challenge was to cook a dish for 100 people for a fundraiser at Bethel Baptist and make something “that speaks to your soul. …Things that are passed down from generation to generation, things that remind you of your family.”

This show can occasionally do a bad job feeling like they’re trying too hard to make a cooking show “culturally important” or tying in high-minded ideas with food, but… I think they kind of nailed it this time? I’m a big time sucker for “cook me the food that reminds you of your people.” Food history and family stories are kind of like my personal misty juice, and I’m the type of guy who rolls his eyes every time a cooking show contestant cries because of how much they miss their dumb wiener kids, or says “I’m doing this all for them!” (you are not, shut up).

Suffice it to say, it was a pretty solid episode, where the sentimentality actually felt earned and the chefs all brought their A-games. If there was anything that cheapened it, I would say it was probably the fact that Tom Colicchio showed up to a Juneteenth party looking like a plantation owner:

Damn, dude, did you raid Calvin Candie’s boudoir for that outfit? Someone should’ve pulled him aside and said, “Hey, man, it’s Juneteenth, try not to dress like someone who’s about to say ‘Well, I do declayuh!’”

Kwame had to try to undo the damage by showing up to judges table with a bejeweled glove:

Speaking of Leonardo DiCaprio memes, I went full Rick Dalton when Kwame pulled out the glove.

I’m not really qualified to discuss “swag levels” and whatnot, but I’ll simply say that Kwame has come a long way since selling candy on the subway. Top Chef has a way of turning nerdy chefs into well-scrubbed TV stars. The transformations are incredible. Do you think if some television producers got a hold of me they could make me look like not such a piece of shit? Well anyhoo

RESULTS

Quickfire Top: Buddha, Damarr*, Evelyn. Pedantic Honorable Mention to Luke.
Quickfire Bottom: Nick, Ashleigh.

Elimination Winner: Jae.
Elimination Loser: Luke.

RANKINGS

7. (+1) ((Eliminated))

AKA: Liddell. Die Hard. Meekus. Eurotrip. The Danish Zombie. Noma… Noma… Noma gonna be in this competition much longer, anyway.

Soul Food Dish: Frikadeller, Mom’s Meatloaf Style

Critiques: “It was tough.” “It wasn’t juicy.”

At last, Luke finally came through on my week two nickname of “Noma gonna be in this competition much longer.”

And it only took seven more episodes! Alas, The Danish Zombie finally stopped staggering inexorably forward (Assuming he doesn’t win Last Chance Kitchen). Honestly, it was probably good that they finally put Luke out of his misery. I was getting a little sad watching the judges bat Luke’s emotions around like a cat toying with a half-dead lizard every week. Leave him alone! He lost his tail four episodes ago!

Luke opened this week cooking a purple cauliflower steak in the quickfire that had Padma asking, “Luke, did you enjoy this challenge? …Because it shows.”

After praise like that from a famous supermodel, surely Luke was about to be declared the winner of this immunity-gaining challenge… right?? But then they started announcing the favorite dishes and Luke’s heart seemed to break a little bit with each name that wasn’t his. By the time Padma got to the third (out of seven!) Luke looked like he was about to flip over table. And then she said, “…And honorable mention, Luke.”

Wow, a special award created just for Luke! Surely this will cheer him up! It’s never a good sign when the judges treat you like a Make-a-Wish kid. I thought Tom was going to burst into his bedroom dressed like Batman. “Cheer up, Luke, it’s your old buddy, Bruce Wayne! You’re doin’ great, pal!”

For his elimination challenge dish, Luke made a Danish frigadillo (later research would determine this was a “frikadeller“) in the style of mom’s meatloaf. He also made sure to get in one last “I’ve lived in Europe” on the way out, which was on brand. Every time Luke said “mom’s meatloaf” part of me wished it was “mom’s spaghetti,” Eminem-style, which would’ve been so fitting for the last white guy in the competition.

I thought it looked pretty good, but soon Luke was snapped back to reality, ope there goes gravity, ope he’s so sad but he can’t give up that easy… time’s up over BLAOW.

Sad for Luke to go out on such a relatively strong performance (I want to swim in those white cheddar mashed potatoes), but this was a few episodes coming. RIP to Luke. He may not have been the best chef in this competition, but he looks like he could bench the most.

6. (+1) Ashleigh Shanti

AKA: Moonjuice. Sugar Hillcountry.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Low-country crab rice with oyster gravy.

Critiques: “I was expecting some crispy bits and I did not get that.” “It was like two things together that didn’t need to be together.” “I didn’t expect the rice to be so doused.”

Speaking of the judges playing with their food, there’s Ashleigh, who every week seems to wake up refreshed and newly confident, with a brand new plan to really cook “her food” and smash the judge’s palates in the back walls once and for all and whatnot. Which quickly dissolves into yet another brutally nitpicking self-criticism session in front of the judges.

This challenge seemed tailor-made for the self-described “Afro-lachian” chef. I thought Ashleigh’s rice, combining her low-country father’s heritage with her Appalachian mother’s, sounded good. Tom liked it. And yet, it seems you can never have enough crispy crab bits to please some people. Bunch of crispy queens around here if you ask me.

If Ashleigh’s isn’t taking crap for a vinegary tartare it’s for crab rice with insufficiently crispy bits, which makes me think she’s not long for this competition. Ashleigh’s food always looks good until the judges say it isn’t. Stop gaslighting me, Padma Lakshmi!

5. (+1) Jae Jung

AKA: Noodles. Jae West. Hilaria. Dr. Hibbert.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Korean Baby Fish?

Critiques: “Perfectly flaked.” “Very interesting dish.” “This was a dish Jae just created, so it was like a new kind of comfort food she just invented.”

I always feel a little bad, because Jae’s English skills seem to leave her at a distinct disadvantage in the bullshitting-about-why-the-dish-fits-the-abstract-prompt department. That’s where a command of the language and maybe some liberal arts education could really come in handy. I could help her with that, bullshitting my way through half-assed metaphors is literally my only skill.

Anyway, Jae, in between uproariously laughter at her own non-jokes (Jae is the Dr. Hibbert of this competition) cooked up fish the way her mother used to feed to her as a baby. She didn’t give it a name but I’m calling it “Korean Baby Fish,” which was so good that it gave her the win and had Tom pointing out that “Well, ‘Seoul’ is the capital of South Korea.”

Nice one, Tom. Not even Jae was corny enough to find that pun. Which, to be fair, I had incorporated into her first nickname (“Seoul Food”) in these rankings myself before I decided it was too obvious. Oh God, has fatherhood turned me into a dad?! Damn my incredibly potent semen!

So yeah, Jae won, and seems to be on a bit of a streak after belatedly leaning on her French-trained fish skills. Is it enough to bump her up in the rankings? I don’t know, the competition is pretty stiff from here on out.

4. (-1) Nick Wallace

AKA: Domingo. Chocolate Mormon. The Count.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Nana Queen’s Salmon Cakes with Hoppin’ John salad.

Critiques: “The seasoning was spot on.”

Of course the seasoning was spot on, this is the inventor of Nick’s 26 we’re talking about here for Chrissakes!

Yes, it was another mostly solid-if-unspectacular week for Nick, who pronounced his dish “sal-mon” in one clip and “saa-mon” seconds later. Pick a pronunciation, man!

I’m putting Nick just behind Evelyn this week, for the sin of not counting the spices in his dish and a disappointing lack of pork neck. I don’t think Nick is going to win this competition, but I have high hopes that he’ll one day become as synonymous with spice blends as the Lawry family.

3. (+1) Evelyn Garcia

AKA: Cuddles.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Beet sopes with black beans and chorizo.

Critiques: “This is maybe the top dish for me today.”

Evelyn once again cooked two solid dishes that received universally positive reviews and seemed wildly endearing in the process. It probably helps that I have the clearest frame of reference for Mexican food. I don’t know if Evelyn is going to win with Buddha and Damarr around, but she seems like a shoo-in for fan favorite. She and Nick feel neck and neck to me.

2. (even) Buddha Lo

AKA: Buddha. Mr. International. Big Pun. Asian Ben Mendelsohn. The Salad Nazi. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Terminator.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Grandma’s Curry, aka nasi lemak.

Critiques: “Nothing completely popped.” “It felt compartmentalized.” “Not enough heat.”

Buddha seems to be cementing his position as, if not a villain, certainly the shrewdest, most shark-eyed competitor. Which is wild to say about a guy who comes from Australia (the chillest country) and is nicknamed Buddha (the chillest deity).

Buddha has become a favorite in this competition, not through getting in touch with this roots and learning to trust the humble food of his upbringing (the usual paths to success on Top Chef) but rather through meticulous study of past Top Chef seasons to gauge the judges’ tastes and the tactical employment of sophisticated cooking techniques to fit them. He’s even starting to play Arnold Schwarzenegger-in-Pumping-Iron-esque mind games to psych out the competition, such as when Luke tried to warm up his plates in the oven like Buddha was doing, and Buddha boxed him out and told him “You don’t wanna do that, that’s a stupid idea.” (If you can think of an Arnold Schwarzenegger food pun, please comment below).

Buddha immediately won praise for his hot plates and landed a slot ahead of Luke. He may be approaching this competition like a sophisticated AI but he’s crushing it.

So when Buddha said he was going to cook from the heart in the elimination challenge and make grandma’s curry, the touching story about his dead father notwithstanding (I got misty, I’m not ashamed to say), I was immediately worried for him. Sure enough, the reviews for his dish were uncharacteristically lukewarm. Cooking “from the heart” isn’t Buddha’s thing; cooking like a food assassin is.

1. (even) Damarr Brown

AKA: Catchphrase. James Beard. Screech.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Hoecakes with ham hocks and collard greens.

Critiques: “Thank your ancestors for me.”

This challenge seemed tailor-made for Damarr, who introduced himself in the first episode saying, “I’m here to prove that my collard greens are as good as your cassoulet.”

That quote is starting to feel like Babe Ruth calling his shot. No, Damarr didn’t win this challenge, but he already had immunity. He also cooked about the simplest thing possible and received universal raves. If it was up to Tom, it sounded like Damarr would’ve won.

The editors tried to amp up the drama by focusing on Damarr burning his first few hoecakes and worrying that he wouldn’t have enough batter, but I wasn’t buying it. This guy made an award-winning carrot cake in a broken oven, you think he can’t figure out a hot pan? Please.

Damarr, of course, eventually figured it out. I guess from now on if I want burnt ho cakes I’ll have to call your mother.

—

Read the rest of our Top Chef Power Rankings here. Vince Mancini is on Twitter.

Ex-The Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson is beloved for damn good reason. In addition to being deeply, inherently funny, he’s an all-around classy bloke and so likable. After his decade long late-night stint ended in late 2014, Craig’s been doing his thing, which includes stand-up comedy touring and living to tell that tale. His particular brand of acerbic wit has been sorely missed since his departure, so naturally, when James Corden revealed that his own tenure on The Late Late Show would end in 2023, Twitter was awash with suggestions that Ferguson come back.

In other words, people do enjoy Corden’s Carpool Karaoke segment, but damn, they loved watching Craigy Ferg and listening to his thick Scottish brogue while he bantered with Geoff the Robot. Could Ferguson possibly have anything to say in response to his successor also walking toward the sunset? More importantly, would he address calls for him to suddenly materialize in his old gig? He did both of these things, one more subtle than the other.

First, let’s revisit what Ferguson said (in 2021) to the idea of CBS reviving the show with him in it. He was very blunt at the time: “Ok. As long as I’m not in it.”

And upon news of Corden leaving as well, he offered his congrats (and praise) with this pointed addition: “Retirement is awesome. See you at the bingo.” In other words, Ferguson’s “retired,” and he intends to stay that way.

Still, that will not detour the legion of devoted Craigy Ferg fans:

Perhaps, at least, we can dream about a compromise.

It’s great to be adored! And even better to be adored and keep one’s distance. Good on ya, Craig Ferguson.

“Why did we do this to ourselves?”

It’s the question showrunner Liz Flahive jokingly admits to asking herself as we dive deep into the trippy, feminist Magical Mystery Tour that is ROAR. The anthology series on Apple TV+ marks Flahive’s second producing adventure with longtime friend and co-creator Carly Mensch. Their first, the nostalgic neon-drenched ode to an 80s-era women’s wrestling league that is GLOW, found its home on Netflix, and in the hearts of streaming fans craving a comedy series filled with diverse and complicated portraits of femininity. It featured an eclectic mix of established names like Alison Brie, Marc Maron, Betty Gilpin, and Chris Lowell; newcomers like Sunita Mani and Britney Young; and bonafide brawlers like Kia Stevens. Beneath the camp and spandex was a subversive investigation into sexism and gender equality following the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s. It was a critical success and, as Flahive puts it, a “dream” show but, like so many things, it came screeching to a halt before production of its fourth season got underway thanks to the pandemic shutdown.

When Netflix couldn’t iron out the logistics of filming the already greenlit installment amidst ever-changing COVID protocols and talent availability, the streamer simply canceled it – a move that was met with plenty of fan outrage and a few petitions begging for its eventual return.

“It’s like they ask you to build a house, but you can only live in it for 15 to 30 minutes,” Flahive says when talking about the cancellation. “When you’re making a show, when you’re building a cast when you’re building a crew when you’re building a season, you’re investing, especially as a showrunner. You’re living in that house for a really long time creatively and you’re investing in it.”

Besides the restrictions placed on them by the pandemic, personnel changes at Netflix may have contributed to the eventual decision to end the show so abruptly. Just a month before the announcement, Cindy Holland, who championed the streamer’s move into original content, producing shows like Jenji Kohan’s Orange Is The New Black, exited the company she helped build. Jane Wiseman, the head of Netflix’s Original Comedy Series, also cut ties with the platform.

“For a few seasons, we had a very good run creatively and had a lot of great support from Cindy Holland and Jane Wiseman and Jenji Kohan. I think, like anywhere else, places change, things change, what places want change,” Flahive explains. “That’s complicated and hard as a creative who’s told one thing season one, and then by season four, you hear something very different.”

For Flahive and Mensch, the relocation to Apple TV+ brings a new challenge: an anthology series, something they’d never done before. The show was also an adaptation of a collection of short stories, which only added to the trial-by-fire nature of the project.

“After we made GLOW, which was the joy and privilege of our lives, we were approached by many people to make something similar or adjacent,” Flahive recalls. “And I think as much as we love making shows about women, obviously, we just wanted to make sure we were always pushing ourselves in a new direction and doing something new.”

GLOW fans might notice some overlap between the two series, especially in terms of the cast — Mensch and Flahive have invited old friends like Brie, Gilpin, and Lowell to come play in their new surrealist sandbox – but the ties run a bit deeper than that. As Flahive explains, the idea for ROAR came to them while they were still in pre-production mode for season three of their Netflix hit, pushing them past their self imposed policy about being “monogamous creatives,” the allure of an anthology series’ self-contained nature and the opportunity to mix genres and work in different characters proving too powerful to not at least entertain.

With episodes that focus on everything from maternal guilt – something Flahive admits both she and Mensch could write about “until the cows come home” – to the commodification of Black art and the universal experience of being stuck in a toxic relationship heightened with a fantasy element that involves a talking duck, ROAR is impossible to pin down. Some of its episodes, like Cynthia Erivo’s body-horror-infused examination of modern motherhood, are stomach-churning. Others, like Brie’s satirical romp that tasks a spectral stand-up comic with solving her own murder, borrow the same comedic purpose GLOW felt driven by. And still others, like Issa Rae’s futuristic thriller about a Black creator whose work gets co-opted to the point where she begins to disappear, feel straight out of the Twilight Zone. The reason? Both Flahive and Mensch were determined to bring in different perspectives to translate these stories to the screen.

“The stories in the book, they’re pretty sparse,” Flahive explains. “We sent the book to our writers — Halley Feiffer, Janine Nabers, and Vera Santamaria — and we were like, ‘Tell us which stories you respond to. And then let’s have a conversation about the ones that you think you’d want to write.’”

That creative freedom and loose collaboration style opened up the show, giving it space to evolve from its origins in ways that feel fresh and relevant. Nabers, a playwright, producer, and writer on shows like Atlanta, connected with the story titled The Woman Who Disappeared. In the book, that tale focuses on an aging academic who disappears because society starts to ignore women who are older, refusing to see them as real people, but Nabers pulled a different metaphor from it for the show.

“She was like, ‘I think there’s a story in there about the commodification of Black art and how Black women are not seen as their stories are being taken and told,’” Flahive explains. “The collaboration between her and Issa and Channing Godfrey Peoples, to kind of make that episode, was really its own thing — and I think feels very different from what’s in the book in a great way.”

There’s a thrown-in-the-deep-end vibe inherent to most anthology stories. As one-offs, episodes are never given much time to flesh out backstories and set the scene before the real action ramps up. That’s true of ROAR too. We meet most of these characters in the midst of life-changing circumstances that render their past selves almost irrelevant. It’s an interesting change of pace for the creators of a show whose first season felt like one giant exposition explaining the origins and motivations and conflicting personalities involved with the formation of an early 80s women’s wrestling league.

“The pace of season one of GLOW, which I adore, was very intentional,” Flahive says. “But the constant roller coaster of these episodes is just wild. There is no backstory, it’s just, ‘Get on the train.’ We have to hit the ground running, we have to understand a lot of stuff, which puts a lot of pressure on everything: production design, costumes, the writing, the direction being crisp … Just making sure we’re setting you up to get on the ride with us, and then it can get messy and complicated.”

When you ask Flahive which kind of storytelling she prefers – the kind that lets you have a beginning, middle, and end in just one episode or the kind that gives you the real estate to build a world over the course of multiple seasons without the guarantee you’ll get the chance to say goodbye to it, she doesn’t have a ready answer.

“It’s such a double-edged sword,” she admits. “You do love falling in love with characters, season after season. That’s kind of the magic of TV. But with [ROAR] these episodes all ended where we intended them to end, which is nice. So ideally we’ll get to have it both ways one of these days.”

The sting of GLOW’s cancellation still feels particularly fresh for fans – every so often a call for its renewal or a movie follow-up makes the rounds on social media – but maybe there’s comfort in knowing that its creators, Mensch and Flahive, found a way to move on from the disappointment by channeling some of the same elements that made the Netflix series so popular into a new show that’s inspiring them to experiment with and challenge the notions of what they thought they were capable of.

“[ROAR] has been sort of a creative balm to what happened with GLOW,” Flahive says. “We’ve finished all eight of those stories. We saw that they had a beginning, middle, and end. I think if this taught us anything, it’s that there are lots of different ways to tell a story. You just keep going. You move your house and you bring new and old friends with you. That’s the magic of making things.”

Paramore bandleader Hayley Williams has been up to a lot — from joining world-dominating pop star Billie Eilish on the stage at Coachella to recording the highly anticipated follow-up album to 2017’s After Laughter. But there’s more in the works, including this just-announced podcast called Everything Is Emo, a part of the BBC Sounds Back To Back series, that will dig into the history of the genre.

In a statement, she explained what motivated her to start this new project:

“Not long ago, people started calling me a ‘veteran’ of my scene and of the music industry. It sounds so funny to me because most of the time I still feel like a fan. The serious truth is I have, in fact, grown up in this scene for the last two decades. I guess that’s a pretty long time. I’m really excited to have the opportunity to publicly nerd out about bands and songs that make my favorite subgenre feel like home to me. And while it will be fun to take some trips down memory lane, I’m just as excited, if not more, to play music from new artists I’m discovering all the time.

Everything Is Emo is meant to feel like a conversation with other fans of the genre, young and (ahem) old. There’s going to be plenty of interaction, which I hope will feel somewhat reminiscent of the message boards and forums I used to frequent as a teenage scene kid.

More than anything, I hope music fans and artists alike will be psyched to hear a highly considered spectrum of ‘EMO’ in all its forms. And yeah, of course you’ll hear some Paramore.”

The first episode is out now.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Walking Dead‘s Daryl and Carol show will now just be the Daryl show.

Earlier this week, we learned that after over a decade of filming in the Georgia wilderness, Melissa McBride will “no longer participate” in an announced TWD spinoff series with Norman Reedus. “Relocating to Europe became logistically untenable for Melissa at this time,” a spokesperson for AMC explained. “We know fans will be disappointed by this news, but The Walking Dead Universe continues to grow and expand in interesting ways and we hope to see Carol again in the near future.”

Fans were disappointed in the news, and some took out their anger on Reedus.

“Some of you have gone WAY too far. TOXIC. Attacking norm for crap he has NOTHING to do with?” Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Negan on The Walking Dead (and a prematurely revealed spinoff with Lauren Cohan), tweeted. “Melissa made a call that was hers alone. She wants/needs a break. Respect that. Factors involved that are nobody’s business. Norm, who’s given more than anyone to you all. Just SH*TTY.”

He continued, “Norman had nothing to do with picking location. That decision is all about story, ideas… MONEY. That’s studio/network. Not actors. We can say yes and do, or no, and not do… MAYBE. SOMETIMES. If we’re lucky and don’t have contract yet. Rarely does actor have that power.”

At least no one tried to bite him again (probably).

(Via NME)

Yesterday was a big day in Barbados, as April 28 marks National Heroes Day, during which the island nation honors a select group of people who have been declared National Heroes. Rihanna earned that distinction last November, meaning this year’s National Heroes Day was Rihanna’s first as an honoree, about which she was thrilled.

Rihanna shared some photos from when she was named a National Hero last year and wrote, “My very first #NationalHeroesDay as a National Hero of my country Barbados! [Barbados flag emojis] What an absolute honor to be amongst such great men and women who have come before me and held this title in commitment to our nation! I will forever cherish these memories and continue to represent the Bajan people and my home Barbados to the fullest!! Love and gratitude to both The Prime Minister, The Honorable Mia Amor Mottley and our President, Her Excellency The Most Honorable Dame Sandra Mason for trusting me with this honor!”

The first National Heroes Day was celebrated on April 28, 1998, 100 years after the birth of Sir Grantley Herbert Adams, Barbados’ first prime minister (a position then called “premier”). The holiday has been observed annually since then.

The National Hero distinction is a big deal, as Rihanna is just one of 11 people to ever be given the title and the first one since the inaugural ten-person class in 1998. Rihanna is one of only two living National Heroes of Barbados, alongside legendary cricket player Sir Garfield St Aubrun Sobers. She’s also one of just two women to ever receive the honor, the other being Sarah Ann Gill, a social and religious leader in the 1800s.

This week on Indiecast, hosts Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen take a deep dive into the most talked about albums from 2002. Re-examining releases like Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Interpol’s Turn On The Bright Lights, Beck’s Sea Change, and Rilo Kiley’s The Execution Of All Things, Steven and Ian sort the albums into a few different categories: Overrated, underrated, properly rated, and their absolute favorites.

Along with revisiting music from two decades ago, Steven and Ian discuss all that happened in the music industry during their week-long hiatus. Elon Musk is trying to buy Twitter, Greta Van Fleet’s Josh Kiszka apologized for appropriating indigenous culture over the years, and Wilco dropped their 20th anniversary Yankee Hotel Foxtrot reissue, which is an impressive 11-LP box set. Finally, Succession‘s Cousin Greg, whose real name is Nicholas Braun, is apparently starting an indie rock TV series.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 86 on Spotify below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

Donald Trump has said a lot of ridiculous things throughout his life, and many, many offensive things, too. And while his most supporters didn’t seem to mind that he enjoys grabbing women “by the p*ssy,” one would think—or, at least, hope—that even his most true-blue fans would want to put their MAGA hats on mothballs for a beat after learning of the former president’s fear of flying fruits.

Earlier this week, transcripts from an October 2021 deposition with Trump were made public. In them, he defends telling a crowd of supporters in 2016 to “knock the crap out” of anyone they see “getting ready to throw a tomato”—an act we previously believed only happened in Muppet movies, but one Trump seems decidedly familiar with, and knowledgeable about. On Thursday night, Seth Meyers attempted to share this development, along with quotes from the transcript, with his viewers, but had trouble getting through the words out without breaking into hysterical laughter.

After breaking out a spot-on impression of how Trump might have wanted to handle the situation—“I wanted to use some highly specialized fruit ninjas. I said, ‘Let’s do ninjas, because they have the fruit swords.’ But they said no.”—Meyers got to the most idiotic part of Trump’s already senseless argument.

“There’s this even dumber part of the deposition where Trump says, ‘You get hit with fruit… it’s very violent stuff. We were on alert for that… I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit.’

What do you mean ‘do fruit’?! What do you mean you were put on alert? There’s an alert system for fruit? It’s like the Homeland Security threat level? Red’s tomato, yellow’s for banana, and green is for avocado. You know what they say: If you get hit with an avocado, you’re toast!”

You can watch the full segment above, beginning around the 8:55 mark.

Bryson Tiller is only a few years older than Jack Harlow (29 vs. 24, respectively), but that didn’t stop Harlow from looking up to his fellow Louisville, Kentucky native in his younger days. As Harlow is gearing up to release Come Home The Kids Miss You next week, he took a moment to shout out Tiller by sharing a DM exchange they had when Harlow was 17.

It started last night when Tiller offered some unsolicited support for Harlow, tweeting, “get ready for my bro Jack’s new album. soon you’ll see why he is number 1. MAY 6th.” Harlow responded by writing, “Dreams come true,” and sharing a screenshot of a DM exchange they had on June 30, 2015.

In it, Harlow starts by thanking Tiller for how well he has represented Louisville on a big stage. Harlow then noted the influence Tiller had on him while expressing confidence about where he himself would end up, writing, “I’m a massive fan dude and study your every move. I just turned 17 and I’m very confident in my craft and trajectory of my career.”

After Harlow concluded by calling Tiller a “hometown hero” and expressing his desire to meet, Tiller responded, “thanks man I appreciate it. keep working. anything is possible.”

Indeed, it does seem like anything is possible for Harlow: His debut album, 2020’s Thats What They All Say, went No. 5 and Harlow has two No. 1 singles to his name: “First Class” and his Lil Nas X collaboration “Industry Baby.”

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